Fitting the Engine

And ended up with this:

I really love my removable rear apron, it makes removing the engine so mucht easier!. It kinda looks like a Baja beetle now.
I also removed the rear fenders because of the cutting that has to be done to fit the engine, but I'm also switching to fibre glass fenders (original width).

Now that I got the VW engine out, I had a chance to compare the two engines

From the side:

From the front:

It is a bit hard to see because of all the stuff I have in my garage, but the two engines are very similar in size. The alfa engine is a bit shorter than the VW engine, but that's mainly because of the VW exhaust. The Alfa engine is a bit wider than the VW, mainly around the distribution covers. It's about 5 cm's per side wider, as you can see in this picture:

Here I rolled the Alfa engine behind the beetle, to see how it will fit:

And it almost fits, if the beetle was just a couple of cm's wider, I could have moved the engine in the engine bay (until the distribution covers get in the way..).

Here's a closeup:

And another one:

I allready knew that the bumper support brackets had to be cut to be able to fit the engine, but now I see that it would be best that to make them removable.

edit 29-12-2005: Today I jacked up the car higher in the rear, so that I can roll the engine beneath it. Now I could see where I must cut the bumper support brackets. On these two pictures you can see why (part of) the bumper brackets have to go:

Only the distribution covers are to wide for the body. The rest of the engine seems to clear the body.

I'm probably gonna cut along the red line...:

I want to create a bracket that runs underneath the distribution covers to the back. I want to use the two remaining bolts from the bumper bracket to attach the bracket. I'm thinking something like this:

The green square is the side of a beam that will run from the left bracket to right side bracket. That beam will be my rear engine support.

edit 23-01-2006: The adapter plate is bolted to the engine, it's time for cutting and test-fitting the engine...

I have to locate some new flywheel bolts, one of them had a damaged thread when I took it out. So the flywheel is missing one bolt and is not torqued to spec yet. The flywheel had to go on first before putting the adapter plate on the engine. It wouldn't fit through it.

edit 27-01-2006: I cut away part of the rear of the car a long the lines I drew previously:

But when I wanted to mount the engine, I couldn't mate the engine to the gearbox. I had 4 cm's left when I hit the body of the car. I have to cut more. This means I have to reconsider the brackets I had thougth of for the rear engine mount. I lost one thread on the right side, so I'll have to find a another way to attach the bracket:

I had to cut about 3 cm's extra on the left side, and 5 cm's on the right side:

And after that, the engine fitted! It's in for the first time:

I encountered a problem on the left side. Because my beetle (well actually the donor-beetle) was in an accident, the left rear side is bend out of shape. It's bend downwards, so I had a rear apron that was slanting. This was one of the reasons I really didn't mind cutting up the rear. But as shown on the next picture, I will have troubles mounting the rear apron again:

Ah well....I'll have to find a solution one way or another... See the next to-do item: "make rear fenders and apron fit".