One thing I definately have never liked about the Caddy V8 engines was the ugly valve covers. Luckily, I had recently picked up an Allante engine for its unique intake runners, so why not use its unique valve covers as well? Pictured above is the engine with the stock valve cover removed, and a picture of it's soon to be inhabitor. I thought long and hard about swapping the entire intake manifold, since it adds 20+ HP, however, I decided against it. Afterall, I need SOMETHING to do for a project down the road!

Pictured above is the front poly transmission mount, made by Rodney Dickman at www.RodneyDickman.com. As you can see from the left photo, a spacer was added in to both bring the mount ever so slightly closer to the mounting bracket on the transmission, and to add some height to the mount. To add even more height, two thick steel washers were added between the mount and the cradle, as seen in the right photo, to adjust the height to the the right setting so that the engine was completely level sitting on the cradle.

For the rear poly transmission mount, I again used Rodney Dickman. He uses the standard Energy Suspension GM 350 poly transmission mount, part Number 3-1108, to make his Fiero tranny mounts with. The rest of the mount is 1/4" steel plating that is bent and formed to fit the oem position. However, some custom things like this are never exact. Firstly, I had to raise the height of the mount ever so slightly, using 1/2" thick steel spacers that I cut from some scrap metal I picked up at a local machine shop. The purpose for this was to make the engine sit level. Secondly, I had to trim off the edges of the steel plating in order for the mount to fit in the stock citation location and relocate the holes that hold the steel to the poly mount itself. Also note in this picture that the poly cradle mounts are installed into place with their oversized form fitted steel washers.

On the left side of the picture, you can see the engine mounting bracket that I fabricated using an AutoCAD template made by Jon Lagler of www.fieroaddiction.com. The template was made assuming an '84 to '87 Fiero cradle was being used, but for my application, it worked as well. Citations and Fieros share virtually the same drivetrains, sharing all the same mounting points and even the same part numbers for motor mounts. The only aspect of this engine mounting bracket that was different was the thickness. At the time, I only had 3/8" steel available to me. As a result, I was forced to notch the bottom portion of the bracket as it was VERY close to making contact with the oil pan. To keep things simple, the actual poly mount I used was the same Energy Suspension part no. 3-1108. if you examine the picture on the right, I was forced to grind a corner of the mount off, as a large beed of steel left over from the welding was left behind, interfering with the mount being seated flush against the flange. The red line indicates where the bracket is to be seated on the block.

Anybody noticing a trend here? For all 4 mounting locations, the Energy Suspension GM 350 transmission mount, part no. 3-1108, is used. One of the reasons I chose to go with Rodney Dickman's transmission mounts over WCF mounts (www.westcoastfiero.com) is because they utilize the same poly mounts that I would be using on the other mount locations. This will make replacing a bad mount much more economic in the future. Another very notable item in the split picture above are the steel spacers I used for this front engine mount. At the time, the only thing that was available for scrap that would get the job done were these 1/4" stainless steel spacers. Little did I know how difficult it would be to drill holes in these babies, even with the use of a drill press. The density of this steel was so great that I went through 5 rather expensive drill bits JUST to drill two holes in each plate.

The exhaust system setup on this motor will be utilizing dual oxygen( O2 ) sensors. For this reason, as well as available routing space for the exhaust pipes, I chose to go with two front Cadillac Seville/Eldorado exhaust manifolds. After cleaning the manifolds with degreaser and laquer thinner, they were painted with 1200 degree high-temp ceramic paint.

Voila! She's mounted and ready to go into the engine bay. Notice I did not use the rear valve cover from the Allante engine. The reason for this is because many accessories physically mount to the rear valve cover. The Allante rear valve cover does not have the provisions for these accessories. I will be waiting for the Allante intake project before I swap over the rear Allante valve cover.

Looks good, no? The entire drivetrain and cradle assembly is mounted on top of two automotive wheel dollies. Between the two of them, they are rated for 2,000 pounds, so handling this weight is a cake walk. They will facilitate rolling the entire assembly underneath my '81 X-11 once the front is jacked up in the air.