After wildly missing my end of June goal due to the Jeep taking WAY more time than I thought, I was able to get back to The Mule 2 of the last 3 weekends. I looked over my fit check list, then dropped the engine back out to finish up the harness.
I trimmed the right hinge box to give "just enough" clearance with the engine in place.
As it appeared in the last photo + the upper scribe line 1/2" from the old position of the cam cover and the lower scribe line about 1/4":
Cut along the lower scribe line:
Finally have *juuuuuuuust* enough:
Probably will want to increase it for dynamic clearance, but this lets me fit the engine.
I trimmed the 90 degree elbow off the oil cooler and ended up with greater clearance to the AC lines than I'd had with the prior 120 degree elbow, so that's an improvement. I have a 60 degree elbow (120 degree bend) to look at as well.
I was also able to scope out clearance to the '85-'86 style heater tubes with the smaller CS130 alternator installed.
There does not appear to be any satisfactory way to make that work. As shown, the hoses are out of the way, but there's not even a fingertip of clearance between the tube and the mount bracket... and everything is packed into that little space as the heater tubes try to snake around the "shelf" low on the firewall.
I also found that rotating the engine down around the forward cradle bolts drags the connector position assurance (CPA) guard feature on the cam sensor connector against the frame rail. This actually cracked the guard, but that means it did its job in protecting the CPA clip.
I installed and refreshed my memory on what my custom AC lines look like and how they fit. The low side line passes through a loop of the '85-'86 fuel tank vent line, which is undesirable, but not prohibitive. I'm thinking about which pieces of tubing, between the Storm Trooper and The Mule, I need to send off to Inline Tube for reverse engineering. Or maybe just have them 3D scanned?
I also looked at O2 sensor wiring and general harness construction and thermal protection. I think I have that figured out, but need to do some figuring and order some fire sleeve.
When I re-routed my AC lines, I did so for packaging and clearance reasons. I'm thinking I'll have to do the same for the heater lines. The Northstar heater connections are at the LF and LR corners of the engine, as installed. The Fiero heater connections are at the RF corner of the engine bay, regardless of whether the '85-'86 (as I have done) or '87-'88 lines are installed. This means that no matter what, additional plumbing has to wrap around the engine bay.
With the heater return to the waterpump capped, and the heater return from the heater core T'd into the right side coolant pipe, the car takes about 3 times as long to start to deliver heat to the occupants as it does when the return from the heater core is plumbed to the heater return to the waterpump, so there aren't shortcuts in heater plumbing without reworking flow inside the waterpump.
If I cut and bead the heater tubes right where they come out from under the floor pan, then I can run hoses directly from there and do not have to try to find the perfect way to squeeze those lines between the forward engine mount bracket and the "shelf" across the firewall.
If I cut the heater tubes, I might as well swap the '87 heater tubes back into the car.
Instead of running hoses across the bottom of the engine bay, cutting vertical holes through the firewall shelf might work out well... that gets the heater hoses above the shelf where they're no longer competing for space with the AC hoses and oil cooler and oil cooler hoses, but does not require sneaking the heater hoses between the shelf and the engine. I'll have to take a look at that when I'm back at the car. If I do that, then those holes will have to route around the tubes to the fuel tank expansion volume... which I *do* have in SS from Inline Tube :-D
My Samco silicone hose order arrived. 4 meters each of 5/8" (16mm, green), 3/4" (19mm, green), 5/16" (8mm, red) & 3/8" (9.5mm,red), with the red ones being lined so they can handle pressurized fuel. With that batch plus a couple of elbows and joiners to play with... Dam Str8 I deserve a free keychain! :-D
(Don't think about the fact that the hitch is rated for 200# of tongue weight... 
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I think...
