At this point, may as well pull the whole lump out to have a closer look on the work bench. A few small details before I get to that.
On the passenger side is the fuel tank. I'm not sure if it's typical, but this one has an electric fuel pump installed. the whole fuel supply system seems a little over complicated to me. It's going on the "can I do this any better for little to no expense?" list.
The inside of the tank is pretty rusty and all the lines are dry rotted (though they don't seem to be leaking yet) I'll just gravity feed some fresh gas in a plastic tank until I get the engine started. I'll worry about a suitable fix/replacement then.
Heres the original state of things on top of the engine. the air filter box was in position but not quite connected to the inlet hose connected to the carburetor. That pile of leaves continued all the way in
Theres some signs of the wiring being messed with. Not sure what's going on there yet.
And a look from the drivers side. Up top is a dog-bone brace to handle the reactive motion of the engine under load as it tries to roll front to back (this brace should be in tension under forward acceleration)
Then the other piece of the motor mount puzzle can be seen in part directly below the drive housing. An oval shaped "sub-frame" cradle with four canted, rubber mounts helps to isolate the vibration that is directly behind the seats in this arrangement.
Right, so here it is out of the frame and on the bench. I pulled it out with the sub-frame attached so that it sits relatively level and stable on the bench. It may be close to 90lbs. I guess it should get weighed while it's out...
I'll get it cleaned up and continue the explorative journey in the next post.