Engine mounting angle

[fastdruid]

Forgive me if this is the wrong section but none of the others seemed to fit.

Anyway, I'm fitting a 1UZ-FE (LS400, front sump) into a mid engined, rear wheel drive kit car, I've got the engine mounted to the gearbox and I'm at the stage of making up brackets. Except that if I mount the engine horizontal I'll have to solid mount it as I have only a few mm between the distributors and a chassis rail.

I've got a choice of either dropping the engine down (but that makes my drive shaft angles a bit extreme), taking it back slightly or dropping it and tilting it down (which keeps driveshaft angles the same).

Which brings me to my question which is different to 99% of other swaps, how much nose down can I safely run? I did some searching and almost everyone else if not level is running tail down due to being front engined rear wheel drive. Can I run the same kind of angles?

 

[BigKriss]

I would think that things like head scavenging and oil pick up location would really dictate by how much you could tilt the engine forward and down.
As far as I know the engine has a few oil return paths along the length of the head so I would reckon that should not be a problem.
Now I do not know the answers here but how far below the crank is the oil level line ? By tilting will it cause the crank to hit oil ? I doubt it though and if it does, that could be corrected by a custom sump if your`e not already doing so.

Bottom line , i.m.p.o. , I don`t see why not , providing it`s not too excessive..What angle do you have in mind ?

I would think the same would apply for the gearbox when filling but obviously to a much lesser degree.

 

[fastdruid]

As regards to the crank hitting oil I think it would have to tilt quite some way before that would be an issue. Certainly should not be a problem for small angles anyway.

The normal issues in inclining engines seem to be coolant or oil related, on the 1UZ-FE the rear bridge has the take off for the heater so it shouldn't end up with an air/steam pocket and its a front sump anyway so the oil should go towards the sump.

As an example of other engines, the LS2 seems to be mounted between +4 and -1.5, SBF is mounted at 3 degrees (tail down) as are most RWD cars.

Anyway, I make it roughly 1.66 degrees for every 25mm the front of the engine is dropped, so I'm tempted to run at about 3 degrees which would drop the front of the engine 45mm. I've then got to add an extra 0.3 degrees as the entire car is tilted by that much so a grand total of 3.3 degrees.

Gearbox I'm not worried about, far more worried if it was the other way round.

 

[Sudsy]

The angle of the engine should be the same as the pinion with a max of 3 deg at the unis. So engine can be moved up or down without varying the angle between the pinion and the engine but the uni angle can change up to 3 deg though in a mid engined car that would not be much due to the short tailshaft. Hope this helps

 

[fastdruid]

There is no driveshaft, engine is bolted to the transaxle so universal joint angles are irrelevant (half shaft CV angles are what I have to worry about).

As far as I can see all other applications have the engine tilted slightly backwards (tail down), no one seems to have tilted it forwards (nose down).

I'm 99.9% sure it should be perfectly fine but was just checking to see if anyone had any reasons why I shouldn't.

 

[XR8tt]

In this case a pic is worth 1000 words..
Being mid mount may be different ...

 

[fastdruid]

Should take some more pictures really...

Anyway, have two.

 

[ash]

What suMp being used?
Dry sump ?

 

[fastdruid]

Standard LS400 wet 'front' sump.

Dry sump would be nice but out of scope right now.