55 Chevy Progress

The 55 Chevy was originally built to be a drag car so it was equipped with motor plates. It had two of them, one off the front of the block and the other off the scattershield. Since the client will be using this as a street car, my first job was to modify it for rubber mounts. We decided to front mount the motor again, only this time I used a saddle style mount off the front of the block and made new ears from 1/4" cold roll plate for the frame side. Here's  how it went.

I started by cutting and grinding off all the old brackets. Then I staged the car on jack stands so it was level, and finally I set the motor and transmission with floor jacks and wood blocks to get it in the correct position. In this photo you can see the saddle type mount bolted to the front of the mockup motor.

I came up with a simple design for the frame mounts. First in paper patterns and then in 1/4" cold rolled plate.

All welded up they look like this.

From the bottom you can see the recessed box plate.

I am using stock 55 Chevy motor mounts. They have these special washers under the rubber donuts that lock them into position. I machined a matching ring into the top of the frame mount so it will all fit. Nice!

Here we go, all glued together and ready to rock. Up next, the steering.