The Firewall

For the firewall we used a 1/4" heat barrier. It came with a layer of aluminum, a layer of fiberglass insulation and an adhesive back. The existing firewall was in excellent condition; I've done many conversions and usually there are 20 to 30 holes drilled through the firewall and by the time you finish plug-welding them and grinding them smooth it dawns on you that it would have been faster to just replace the firewall. But in this case I really liked the product as it covered all the factory holes and looked really nice. It took about 6 hours total to install, including grinding a few bumps and rusted screws off the old firewall, making a template, taping off the good paint, lightly sanding the surface and solvent washing everything to get really good adhesion. The edges were sealed with a 50-year caulk and then painted over with silver paint.

It's always something on projects like this. The serpentine belt conversion we ordered was supposed to fit this engine. After the salesman convinced me it would work I quickly found it did not. The vibration damper pulley had a lip on it that prevented the pulley from bolting on flush. Then they sent me a smaller pulley that was supposed to fit inside the lip which it did, but then the lip was covering up to of the grooves the serpentine belt was supposed to ride in. The guy actually told me, when I called up with the problem, that they had just put this entire setup on an engine and that I was not a "guinea pig" for this product. Well as you can see by the flying chips in the photo, the lip had to come off. It did not remove much weight from the damper but I would like to put a better damper on it when I get a chance. The last photo here shows how the lip covered up the rib grooves on the pulley. At least the guys at March Performance were nice enough to include a free return shipping tag for the items that did not fit.

With the pulleys and belt finally on the radiator and the dual electric fans ready to be installed, it really started to look like we knew what we were doing!