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motor plate

11K views 15 replies 7 participants last post by  MrScharfenberger 
#1 ·
i have a few ? about installing a bbf in a fox body mustang. put motor in for the first time and the motor is off set to the pass side.should i center it up or leave it alone it has front and mid plates.
 
#2 ·
It depends on what you intend on doing with the car. When I build a Drag Race only chassis I prefer to center everything in the chassis. It makes everything a little easier to fab up and, IMHO, makes the chassis reaction to the applied power (for going in a straight line) more evenly predictable. Not that you can't run an offset drive train (Ford and Mopar have been doing it for years in their street chassis') but the weight differentiation has to be dealt with by staggering spring rates (if it's significant) and that makes the chassis (IMHO) a little more time consuming to tune.
Rob
 
#3 ·
I'm in the process of building a 1993 Foxbody myself. Rob is right. For a full on drag car everything shoudl be centered in the car. With that being said there are also compromises to the situation. It is offset to the right to clear the steering linkage. If you center the motor in the car you may be creating a lot more work to make the steering linkage fit. You would then also be looking at custom built headers as weel so they clear everything. So it really depends on what you want to do, how much moeny you have to dump into the money pit and how much extra work you are willing to take on.

With all of that being said I didn't center mine. I used the Flaming River manual rack and pinion and steering linkage. I also used a Total Performance motor plate and matching Mad Dog headers. All of those were plug and play with zero fabrication work.
 
#5 · (Edited)
were did you get the total performane plate at
I got it from Total Performance out of Clinton Township Michigan. I got the Mad Dog headers from them as well. They headers and motor plate were a kit. It all fit PERFECT!

Here is their phone number: (586) 468-3673

Here is what they look like. The motor plate is also designed to sit the motor lower in the car as well.

Total Performance Motor Plate and Mad Dog Headers.








I hope that wasn't too much information.
 
#6 ·
Do you have a clear shot of what the shock towers look like,..did you mod them at all?
 
#8 ·
should not be centered in these cars,theres a few threads out there about this and the problems it causes

if you using hooker headers it wont fit if centered

from the factory they are not centered
 
#9 ·
any links to the centered issues?
 
#12 ·
Ok can some please help me correct my screw up.

I put the motor and trans in the car to make the frame for the motor plates, but forgot to measure the crank centerline offset. Can someone please post up the correct offset or even measure from frame rail to center point on the crank on both side..
Thanks

And yes, i am being lazy to not have to re install the block and trans.
 
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