My headers from Gas-N have arrived! The order took about 4 months but the wait was with it.
While working under the chassis, I noticed that the oil pan was sticking out about 3/8” below the frame rails:
I looked on the F5 forum and several other people with the Blueprint 347 have had the same issue. Apparently, recent changes to the block by Blueprint resulted in the oil pan sitting below frame. The oil pan is an 8 qt. Canton (Model 15-630). Obviousy one solution is to get a smaller oil pan, but they are relatively expensive (~$500) and the pan that I have is the one that Blueprint intended to be on the engine block. Another solution is to put spacers between the engine mount and engine and this is the path that I will take. My first attempt was to raise the engine using the engine lift after backing off the engine mount bolts just enough to be able to remove one bolt at a time and slip on the spacers. However, it became clear the the engine and mount need to be completely free of the chassis because while the mount is still connected to the chassis there remains compression on the mount ‘wings’ that make it very difficult to reinsert the bolt into the engine once removed. I’ve decided that I need some help doing this and as such the step will need to wait for a few weeks.
Much earlier in the build I modified the e-brake so that the cable didn’t go under the rear cross 4” tube. This is described here. However, after seeing how crowded the transmission tunnel is once the transmission is in, I became worried that the modified e-brake wouldn’t fit. It turns out that the e-bake does fit but that I had to take it apart in order to get the main bracket into place.