With the single piece driveshaft and 3.5″ single exhaust I was finding that the heat shield between the exhaust and driveshaft was in contact with the exhaust, the space is tight between those two main components.

I took a hammer and started strategically creating flat spots so that the driveshaft and the exhaust pipe each had some space with clearance to sit within.  I still need to do a test drive to ensure the driveshaft doesn’t rub anything. When I pressed on the heat shield I was getting movement of the heat shield where if it were too close to the driveshaft I’d have expected that there wouldn’t be any movement.  Hopefully that’s a good sign that the clearance is sufficient.

I’ve gotten pretty far behind on making product reviews.  Added to the slate are these Stern motor mounts which are replacing a set of RS4 motor mounts.

Another new addition is a Driveshaft Shop single piece drive-shaft.  The driveshaft support had been damaged on the manual transmission driveshaft and in weighing my options, one being to purchase an aftermarket support to try and install, go with a completely re-manufactured driveshaft, or purchase the single piece unit, I decided the added cost would be worth the easier install and slightly lighter weight.  I will be interested to see if I notice a difference.

I also began to re-install the motor and transmission.  I decided to begin trying to install the axles while the motor was still a good ways out from the mounts so that I could have an easier time of it.  That didn’t work as well as I had planned and after a good 3 to 4 hours of work I finally had inched, literally, the motor into position where I could bolt the axles to the transmission.  At times I was lowering the motor a half an inch at a time to ensure nothing was being bound up or crushed.  I’m seriously considering just installing the axles after the motor is in place the next time I do this.

As an additional note, I connected the stainless steel slave cylinder line while the motor was pretty far out.  It was a fair bit more difficult to get the AN fittings to thread properly versus the stock configuration which just snaps into place.  I ended up removing the driver’s side primary O2 sensor so that I could get my hand into a position where I could get the threads to mesh properly.   With the O2 sensor out of the way things went smoother.

I also ended up removing the bottom portion of the transmission mounts so that I could manipulate the axles.  Yet another reason to think about installing the axles at the end the next time,