I even looked at pickups for rear sump pans and those were all at least 3 weeks out (cut and shorten and reweld). The joys of being a mopar fan

It only took them them 3 weeks to get mine made, I guess im lucky.

got a call from arrow - my pistons made it there so they should be out to me next week. Mahle gets a thumbs up from me. Quoted 4 weeks, deliver in 3.

I realize that this is a hobby car and not a daily, but what about making the pickup tube yourself? If you have the part that attaches to the block and the end that sucks the oil, I'm sure that you are skilled enough to fab one yourself.

thinking pretty seriously about doing that

I got a pan, pick up, dipstick tube and new indicator from modern muscle, said they had them on the shelf as a kit

MILODON stuff is crap...

agreed, but there aren't a whole lot of options out there. I'll be working on the TTI mounts today, so that's another bit o' fun

I think the screen end of the factory pickup is to big to allow the doors to open in the RR pan.

going to work on the motor mounts and oil pickup tomorrow. I was surprised that I could not get the 440 out of the car with the road race pan on it. pretty sure I put it in from the top with that pan on it before. Maybe, after 17 years, it just wanted to stay where it was. Once I unbolted the pan, the motor came right out. We'll see how far I can get on mocking up the hemi tomorrow

Very nice!
Are you going to use an ATI damper?

I'd like to use a superdamper, but that is something that can be swapped out in the car. So I'll do that later.

Meanwhile, I worked on the motor mount brackets. With other posts I have read regarding mounts, headers and other parts not fitting correctly, I wanted to spend the time to make sure things go together smoothly prior to dropping the motor in the car. Of course there was much grinding to be done, the passenger side bracket hit part of the block casting, so I had to grind that corner of the bracket so that the bracket could be bolted to the block (it would not line up without this clearancing). In addition, the holes for the mount stud are little too small, so I had to drill those oversize. I also had to grind the stud shorter so it would not bottom out in the bracket, clean up the mounting surfaces on the mounts so they would sit flat against the bracket and also on the K-member. And lastly, I had to grind the pad of the motor mount where it was contacting the header tube on #1 cylinder.

motor mount stud interference

mount to header tube clearancing

meanwhile, the pistons showed up so now I can take the block to get machined.

Also the throttle body and adapter I ordered showed up. With the adapter, you can run a LS style throttle body

To offset the good progress made was all the bad stuff I found when swapping parts for the transmission. going from the big block to the hemi meant I have to swap trans cases. Since I rebuilt the trans prior to putting it behind the big block, I need to swap all the parts out of the case into a small block case. When I got the trans out of the car and tore into it, there was some bad news. 1 - the converter either ballooned or there was not enough clearance when the parts were bolted together. The converter was hitting the front pump seal, which wore a groove into the base of the converter drive hub. I will end up having to send the converter back to get checked out and see if they can set it up with a shorter assembled height if it was not ballooned. 2 - the TCS direct drum in the trans has a bronze bushing insert in the aluminum. The stator support seals wore pretty serious grooves into the bushing so I'll have to replace that prior to putting the trans back together. I was surprised at the amount of wear considering the low miles on the trans. From what I understand from another post on here, the seals provided with the drum are pretty aggressive. I need to talk to TCS and see if there are any options on using a different seal. I was starting to have issues with clutch chatter in reverse and I guess this was the source. I guess I just expect too much from these parts. It's pretty aggravating.

got the engine mocked up in there. Will work on headers over the weekend.

another