New Transmission  18                 Feb  2012

The plate on the right is what came with my trans mount, which is called a backing plate. This plate goes against the transmission and then the mount gets placed against it. The piece on the left is what I made and does two things, one it has my angle of 4 1/2 degrees and will be used as the backing plate instead of the other. This gives me the target angle that I was looking for and places the trans mount parallel to the cross member surface at the same time.
 

 

 

This backing plate needs to be installed because the trans mount has some small raised areas on the urethane that gets squeezed by the plate, which is normal. This puts the given amount of pressure on the mount according to Energy Suspension's instructions. Now it's time to install it and see how it looks.
 

 

 

What you see here is a straight edge that I've placed across the X member of the chassis. You'll also notice that the straight edge is at an angle running from back to front on the trans mount. You can't see it here but both edges of the straight edge are on my chassis and there is no gap on either end of the trans mount which means it will sit flat against the cross member now. In theory this should work but I'm no engineer, and it did save me from making the cross member the other way which would've been harder to do. I'm pretty confident that this should work just fine though.
 

 

 

Here is the finished cross member which I painted black (with a rattle-can). The reason for the cheap paint is because I priced some material made by House of Kolor to paint a few things and it would cost me over 250 bucks for the minimum amount (quarts) so this would be hard to justify. And I don't own a spray gun either. While I was getting prices on the paint I asked the guy if you can brush this paint on and he said "no". The reason I asked this question is because after I cut and weld under the car it will need to be protected with something so it doesn't rust. I figured that if I could brush it on then I wouldn't have to mask the whole car just to paint a minutes worth of paint. I guess I'll have to think of something else. I'd ask my paint guy to do this but he's not painting anymore, plus we used up all the material that I bought years ago on my car so that won't work either.

Anyways getting back to the cross member, if you look close you can see the holes in the center are now slots. The reason is because once I bolted the trans mount on with the angle under it, the holes didn't line up anymore. It only took a few minutes to make slots out of the holes so it was no big deal. The reason you don't see it bolted up yet is because it looks like it will get in the way of the next piece of the puzzle so I'll do this later. Speaking of later, give me another week or so and I'll have another update which will be about cutting and welding.
 

 

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