A Quick Aside

I’m working on another super-secret project, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Kari’s suggestion about a crankcase with mounting lugs for a postage stamp backplate.  Mark B. posted a picture of an engine mount with mounting lugs made from a piece of 1/8” aluminum T extrusion.  It works well, and looks good.  But the T shaped extrusion isn’t something that you can just run out and buy unless you have a metals superstore around.  And it’s not exactly cheap.  I had an idea that could be done with materials you can get anywhere, and most guys probably have in their garage anyway, so I decided to take a break from the replic,  I mean secret project, and make up the mount real quick.

I figured that even though the beam mount from T-section was nice, it wasn’t worth it to me for the cost of materials to order online.  In my workroom I have plenty of aluminum angle in 1/8” and 1/16” of various sizes.  I’d image most of us guys have some in the garage or workroom.  So, I thought it could be cut and shaped very quickly into a bed mount for the postage stamp backplates.  I figured 1/8” is overkill, so I went with some 1/16”x1” angle.

I bought four postage stamp backplates off of eBay a couple of months ago just to get the fine needle valve assemblies.  With shipping, they came out to about four bucks for each fine NVA.  MUCH cheaper than the fine needle assemblies Texas Timers sells.  I pulled the NVAs from the postage stamp backplates and then threw the backplates in one of my spares boxes.  I dug one back out for this test.




To make this thing more useful, I decided that it had to fit the mounting holes of a Medallion or a TeeDee.  The first thing I did was measure the width of a Medallion .049 case at the lugs, and then measure the width of a regular extruded reedie case.  I zeroed my calipers on the Medallion case so I could see how much wider the extruded case was.  The reedie case is 0.090” wider than the Medallion case.  I don’t know why the image hosting site rotated the Medallion image by 90 degrees, but it won’t let me correct the rotation.





Then I trimmed off the excess plastic from the backplate and filed it smooth.




Next I did a couple of other measurements and scribed my angle stock.  I determined the location of the venturi and used my auto center-punch (the second-best tool ever invented) to mark the location.  A drilled pilot hole and then a quick shot with the uni-bit (THE best tool ever invented), and I had a hole for the venturi through the angle stock.





Then I scribed the lines for the backplate and drilled the mounting holes through the back of the angle.  I then rough cut the mount to shape and drilled the mounting holes to match the lugs on the Medallion.  I ensured that the bed was the same width as the Medallion lugs.








Then it was just mounting the engine to the angle mount.  The standard postage stamp backplate screws work fine with the aluminum angle since I filed down the plastic on the rear of the backplate.