We all know that motors come with so much stuff attached to them it's a little hard to see what you are working with, to attempt to get it to a place like this:
You end up with quite a mess:
Now the next big part of any swap that is a little less on the glamorous side, but just as crucial is the belt drive system and making sure you have all the accessories you need. People will often tell themselves they don't need air conditioning or power steering because it's easier than trying to line the component up and find a special belt and add a tensioner, but the Elise needed to have it all. We started with an alternator, as mentioned before, the W8 comes with a water cooled alternator that is very expensive. We did not want to deal with a water cooled alternator and all the lines needed, especially with already having water and oil lines for the turbos running everywhere. Since we do a fair number of Fiero engine swaps and tend to have Grand Prix alternators sitting on the shelf we grabbed one and tried to make it fit:
Once the alternator was fitted, we turned our focus to belt routing. We try to get as much wrap on the pulleys as possible, there is nothing worse than a squealing belt on a custom built car!
We ended holding off on finishing the belt routings since we still needed to find a 7 rib AC compressor that was compact enough for our install and hadn't sourced one out quite yet. With the motor bolted to a mock up transmission and ready for some test fitting, attention was turned to getting the Elise ready, off came the rear clamshell:
Out came the motor:
The car was then ready for cutting:
The next step was to see if things will fit.