Restoration Design Engine Shelf Installation

After I had finished up the reinforcement where the engine mount had been, I needed to install the Engine Shelf. This is the shelf which is critical for cooling the engine - it effectively separates the cooler  lower part of the engine from the hotter upper part.

So I wire-brushed away the primer to expose bare metal where I needed to weld the Shelf in place and then sprayed Weld-Thru primer onto these areas.

I needed to fabricate the rear 'box' to which the Shelf fixes. Here's how it looks on the driver's side. I needed to make the mirror of this for the passenger side so I referenced it closely to make the net of the box and the box itself.

Here's the metal cut and ready to bend. there are a couple of tricky bends in this box, almost like pleats in trousers, which took a bit of trial and error to get right.

But I got there in the end and tacked the box in place.

Then came the Engine Shelf itself. I had the driver's side shelf to reference for positioning but it took a lot of patience to get it right…and even after it was done I reckon it may be a few mils lower in the back than it could be. But as it houses a rubber seal that sits between the shelf and engine tin, I reckon it's close enough….gulp, fingers crossed!

Here's the shelf in place..

I took the opportunity to weld in place the Battery Tray Support before epoxy primering the whole thing. I decided to do the battery support and tray separately so I could throughly epoxy behind the support.

All nicely painted up…next up is the Battery Tray which is super easy.