
man, I haven't updated in quite a while! Well, here we go:
once I got the engine moved back into the correct position, I got the original mount pads trimmed out, and the new ones welded in. I had to trim 1/2" or so from the ends of the upper mounts so that they would clear. They were a tiny bit wider than the frame, and with settling, I feared they would end up rubbing the frame. Very clean, simple and rugged mounts. Great investment.
Then I went about the little stuff. One of the first things was that I needed to change the dipstick tube. This motor came from a van, so it had the 2.85 mile long dipstick. On the dodge, it's simply a metal tube (seems similar to brake line tubing), with a shoulder swedged into it, and it more or less press fits into the block. Some have a tab to hold it that goes to the front of the head, some don't. When I went to remove mine, the base stayed in the block.

to get the right angle to remove it with my easy-out, I had to remove the timing cover. I didn't really want to, but since some of my long water pump bolts were corroded and not threading in, it also gave me access to clear the threads with a tap. When the cover came off, I got another surprise.
Uh,.. Yeah. That's not good.

so I replaced it with a new double roller set. :d
I'd rather find and repair this crap now than in a month or two. :yes: now on to the radiator. The bottom outlet on the Scout 2 radiator was on the wrong side for my engine. But the local radiator shop couldn't swap sides with the bottom inlet. Following the tip given earlier by dennis, (
thanks a million!!!) I found that a dodge pick-up radiator fit my opening almost perfectly. From 72 until 93 they all appear to be about the same perimeter dimensions, both truck and ramcharger. The only thing really needed to make mine work was that I had to have the mounting brackets reversed from side to side, and to trim off the tabs on the brackets for the fan shroud. In this picture, you can barely see the trimmed piece of bracket for the shroud. Note the bottom "slot" and the top hole.
these lined up perfectly with the stock mounting holes in my Scout 2 core support!!! :clap: it totally blew me away to find this out!
Before I get slapped for using a flex-fan, let me just say this; I don't really like them either. The fan is a temporary until I can get an electric one rigged up, and it came with the motor out of the van. Anyway, I also had to get a 1" spacer to make the fan clear everything. The biggest problem was that it drops an inch or so below the fins at the bottom, so I had to get it just right to clear the tank and the bottom pulley. I also found that I had to trim back the length of the radiator hoses. These came from the van and were practically new, so I just trimmed them. I just routed the transmission cooler lines back to the radiator, instead of my cheapo add-on cooler from the Scout radiator. I'll redo that when I go to the electric fan probably. For now, I'm not towing enough to worry about it. I also scored the factory bent cooler lines from a ramcharger, since my starter is now in the way of where the Scout 2's lines were run. This things nearly looks factory installed.
And speaking of pulleys, man was that ever a pain to work out! One of the few little things that didn't somehow make it into my parts box when the guy pulled my "complete" engine, was the water pump pulley. No problem, I'll just go to the boneyard and score one. Well,.. Not so fast buckaroo. Seems that there were some variations in pulleys that I wasn't aware of. The top pulley seemed to be the same on truck and van, but didn't fit mine right. Not only was it not deep enough to line up with both alternator pulleys, but it rubbed on the bottom pulley.

a couple of phone calls alerted me to the fact that there were a couple of different bottom pulleys, and that I needed to snag them as a set. No prob!

back to the boneyard to get them. What I found was that my boneyard pulley was smaller in diameter, but moved the belt pulleys our farther, making everything line up just right.
Which gets me to where I am today, with as little of the unnecessary details as I can manage to skip.

as of right now, I believe that I am an afternoon away from starting it up. I have to button up the wiring, which was quite the adventure to figure out. Thanks to some searching here, I found the diagrams I needed to bypass my ammeter (burnt and moderately well repaired job from a po just wasn't going to fly with me), and install my Ford starter relay. I also converted to the dodge alternator with the external regulator (I've had great luck with them over the years, not so with the GM stuff), which adds to the fun. I'm either really close to driving it, or rewiring the whole truck after the massive short cools off. Either way I win.

I'll likely go with the kwikwire kit later this year. For now, I need this thing running before my car totally dies.
Oh, and I also still have to botch together an exhaust that will get me to the muffler shop. That will be fun. If nothing else, I'll run it on the manifolds and have it towed to the muffler shop. Not like I haven't done that before! But it will need to run for a bit so that I can get the transmission fluid full in the rebuilt transmission. I'm sure there's at least a dozen little other things to do also, like adjust the shift cable, downshift lever, etc. But we are so close now that it's not funny.