Doing the trial fitting. I'll try to document what I ended up doing as thoroughly as I can, in case anyone else ever wants to give this swap a go. I haven't been able to find any build threads on this swap that were very complete. Lots of questions on how others did it, but they didn't share.
Things are even tighter than I thought. I needed some room up front as the front of the rotary is more squared off and wider than the 1500.
1. original front cross member:
1. original crossmember by
Kevin Frank, on Flickr
2. sliced, hammered down, and re-welded:
2. sliced and welded by
Kevin Frank, on Flickr
3. Trimmed and completed front cross member:
3. completed crossmember by
Kevin Frank, on Flickr
Gained 2.25 inches of room up front so I can set the engine down between the frame rails. It looks like I'm going to have to do some clearancing on the rails and the heater box area to the back of the engine as well.