Got the engine mounts done and the motor and trans in place.
Fabricated out of aluminum, and used the spare two suspension bushing as the isolator, a very lightweight mount.
I widened the cross member area at the trans mount and reinforced it,
and now the exhaust can run next the trans and above the floor boards,
so the bottom of the car will be completely smooth, the oil pan just barely sits below the frame rails. Notice my aluminum steering column too.
I took the rear wheels to the machine shop to have them redrill them to fit the MG bolt spacing and the center hub. I was going to make some adapters, but time is short, and without the adapters the wheels will tuck nicely into the wheel wells, which means I can make a full wheel skirt that covers them all, whereas it looked like the bottom of the wheels would extend outside the body, now they are all inside.
I'm now trying to decide what to do about the clutch and the exhaust.
The FWD 1.0L metro uses a much smaller clutch and flywheel than the RWD 1.3L Samurai, the clutch spline is smaller on the metro. I could just swap in the flywheel and clutch from the Samurai, but it is a lot heavier! No NO NO!!
I want lightweight!! But not sure what I can do about it, it looks like I might be able take apart the metro clutch disk and put in the Samurai center spline part, but I dunno if it'll work or not. That is burning up a couple hundred bucks of parts if it doesn't work. Hmm..