I dropped the motor mounts 1" by slicing them vertically and offsetting the two sides and welding them back together. I want to add some additional bracing to these when I have them off again but I wanted to fit them.

I used a hydraulic press to smash the engine crossmember to gain some clearance. It's kinda caveman-fab, but I think it reall kept a lot of the crossmembers strength. I just did 1/8" at a time or so across the thing 3 or 4 times.

I also did a bit of reshaping of the pan in the press. I had to gain an 1/8 or so of clearance here for the steering:

I made a litle more room for the engine crossmember here too:

You can see the depression it made here:

And here:

This creates a clearance problem between the oil pum pick up and the pan. I solved this by shortening up the brackets that bolt the pickup to the block. The pickup tube also had to be sliced and rewelded to allow the pickup to bolt on at the new angle. You can see the weld on thye tube in the upper left of the pic.

That's what it took me to drop the mounts 1". It might have been a lot easier had I gone 7/8". The steering probably would have cleared and the pickup might not have had to be shortened. I don't have any regrets though as I am sure I'll want all the clearance I can get under the hood.