Has anyone run into this before? Mid 90s VD

[Rick Kirchner]

Earlier this year I had an engine built out of mostly new parts, including a different block and pan. Put the car together, ran it, had an oil leak at the secondary shaft, removed the engine, fixed the leak, and re-assembled.

My car has a split front motor mount to make it easier to pull the engine (first pic). During assembly, the engine is usually "adjusted" with a crane, crowbar, spacer under the pan, etc - such that the kerf caused by cutting the mount is the same on the bottom as the top. Usually not a big deal and usually not much adjustment is needed. No issue when I installed this motor the first time.

But last week I couldn't get things to line up perfectly at the front. The right mount seems to be a bit offset to the rear, and the kerfs on both sides aren't parallel.

However, at the back of the engine it is bolted in as usual to the bellhousing and frame. Everything there is tight and nothing gave me even the slightest pause as it went together. However, the shim/wedge I place under the pan during assembly was much looser than normal, and then I found this (second pic).

My other pan clears the frame by probably a half-inch. I never gave any thought to the pans being different. I suspect this is the cause of my issues, and right now I don't know if this is going to be a big deal or not. Figured I'd just run the thing and see what happens.

[CGOffroad]

I had to deal with this when using the PACE pans to fit in Van Diemens. Except the problem of clearance with them was on the rear of oil pan. I would just lob off the rear of sump to relieve the interference with cars frame work in engine bay. On one of the PACE pans it had been set up to scavenge out of the left side of pan. That didn't work with pump mounting and hose routing. So, those ports had to be welded shut and new ports made in the right side of pan. The allowed hoses to run around the front of motor to pump

[Rick Kirchner]

I had an aluminum pan, looked at the effort required to modify it, and sold it.

[Purple Frog]

IMHO Dremel for clearance. Otherwise the vibration of that 4-banger could cause a problem in that area. YMMV

[DaveW]

IMHO Dremel for clearance. Otherwise the vibration of that 4-banger could cause a problem in that area. YMMV

Agreed. Vibration and repeated dynamic tensile stress on the bottom of that protrusion could cause a fatigue crack or worse.

[Rick Kirchner]

Well if the motor has to come out again I'll be cutting an angle off the back of the pan and filling it with a wad of braze or mig, or getting the old pan back from the builder that has it with the pieces of my other engine. Race this weekend, and only five weeks between this event and the Laguna F2000 race in late June. I believe in the past I've seen a couple pictures of VDs with that flat piece cut and I always wondered why. Never occurred to me that there would be multiple manufacturers of that pan, or that one of them would miss that dimension.

[Rick Kirchner]

just an update....

Replaced the pan with my old one. Motor mounts still don't line up.

Apparently since the VD uses the water neck as the front motor mount, the position of said motor mount varies with how much the block is decked. This build used a new block, thus, its's more than a bit taller than the old block, which had been re-sleeved probably a half-dozen times.

So the extra height was taken up in the kerf where I split the mount. God knows what would be needed to be done if I had the original one-piece mount - the holes in it and the chassis mount plates would ot line up.

I wonder how this problem was solved "back in the day".

[BeerBudgetRacing]

So the extra height was taken up in the kerf where I split the mount. God knows what would be needed to be done if I had the original one-piece mount - the holes in it and the chassis mount plates would ot line up.

Did you make new ones or modify the old ones?

I suspect in the 'old days' they decked everything to the limit.

[tlracer]

I recall seeing the same thing with a second-user FF years ago, where the front mount bolted to the head. In this case the previous owner had worked around it by machining out the originally-round holes to a short vertical oval. As the front mounts are primarily for lateral movement it didn't really compromise them and helped installation.