The more I looked at the front diff mount that I had made, the less I liked it. I was starting to have some serious concerns that it would not be up to the task. This was not helped by the fact that some people on the World Niva Club mailing list were having some problems with front diff mounts at about the same time as I was considering building a different mount. As one of the basic laws of physics states: "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." Applied to the little old Niva front diff this means that there would be a considerable downwards pull on the rear most bolt as the wheels rotate forwards. I was worried that this would put the four little engine mount bolts under too much stress. So a slightly different mount was built. I went from this:

to this:

The biggest difference is the addition of a large bolt on the right hand side of the mount. The mount also rests on the cast iron web where the bellhousing bolts on thereby eliminating (or transferring) the huge torque loads which would be trying to shear off the engine mount bolts to an area which should have no problems dealing with these loads. I have since been informed that some Lancia engine blocks (which are the same as Fiat) have a boss cast in roughly the right place to possibly enable the standard Niva diff mount to be used.

To make the Lada bellhousing fit onto the Fiat block it needs to be modified slightly. The reason for this is a waterjacket coverplate on the back of the Fiat block. After taking to the bellhousing with a hacksaw and a rather large file I ended up with it looking like this.....

hich was really good because it now it just fitted beautifully to the Fiat block.

The clutch coverplate also needs to be trimmed to fit around this same coverplate.