With the mounting of the body and bed panels figured out, it was time to get at the drivetrain. Although I had done a ton of measuring, it's not until you set something in place that you realize if it's gonna work. I built some beefy supports out of cinder blocks and lumber that would set the engine and transmission pretty close to stock height, and then slid the whole mess into place as best as I could. I was going to go back a little over 9 inches, when I remembered a posting I had read a while back. While I can’t remember the author (but I think it may have been Joedoh), the posting said that if you move the drivetrain back 10 inches, you can use a regular cab short bed driveshaft instead of buying a new one or cutting down/welding/balancing the old regular cab long bed shaft. I have to shift my rear axle 1 ½ inches forward, so an 8 ½ rearward shift of the engine/tranny would give me the 10 inch shorter distance (if I’m wrong on any of this, please feel free to point it out!). I set the whole mess back 8 ½ inches and much to my surprise it fits!
The Fargo firewall has a recessed centre (to fit the original straight 6 engine), so there is a ton of room around the distributor, and I will have about a quarter inch clearance at the tranny dipstick tube, which seems to be the furthest obstacle rearwards. Up front I should have ample room to install an electric fan. The shape of the front sheetmetal on the Fargo, combined with the new radiator size (19 x 22) gives me the opportunity to install the radiator high enough that the waterpump snout is actually at the very bottom edge of the rad.
With the drivetrain setback sorted out, I removed the front grill and used shims to get the angles and height and passenger side offset bang on. Doing this alone is actually a pain in the butt. Everytime I shifted one thing, something else would move just a little bit out of position. I eventually made a wooden jig out of a 2x4 and another scrap of wood with a hole drilled in it that catches the tranny mount bolt. By clamping the 2x4 to the frame, I could set the exact position of that tranny mount bolt, thus allowing me to fool around with engine position without bumping the tranny out of position.
With everything in place, and all the angles right, it was time for the mounts. Naturally the mounts ended up sitting where the S10 frame bends in all kinds of directions, so it took many back and forth trips to cut and grind the plates to get an exact fit. Then came the pleasure of tacking them into place. The tops were fine, but the gussets could only be reached from underneath, where it was so tight that my welding helmet didn’t fit. Thankfully I just had to do some quick tacks, as that spatter hurts!
Once the engine was all tacked in place I fabbed a tranny mount, which was just a piece of rectangular tube with a mounting plate that was angled to match the slope of the tranny mount surface.
At this point I was able to breathe a huge sigh of relief. It looks like this swap is actually going to work! I was not 100% convinced up to this point, as I have still not seen any decent threads about using an S10 for this series of Fargo trucks. There will be some minor clearance issues to deal with, but all the big stuff appears to be OK. Next step is to remove the drivetrain and finish cleaning and grinding the frame. I just need some decent weather (it was snowing outside again as I wrote this post).