Allstar Performance ALL10152 Heavy Duty Engine Cradle for SB Mopar

Great item, box was destroyed and thrown in another box. Half the screws were missing. I went to the hardware store and replaced the missing bolts and I love it! I’m assuming the box torn with bolts falling out of it should be checked for missing parts.

Exactly what I needed

I bought this engine cradle to store a spare Mopar 360 small block I had in my garage. The cradle was solid and easy to assemble but I would recommend leaving the bolts loose until the cradle is fitted to the engine because it needs to be moved around a little to completely install, then tighten up the bolts. The only issue I had was with the mounts for the casters. The description stated that this cradle used the 1/2 inch studs but what it didn’t state was that the threads for the studs are coarse threads. Most casters have fine threads and will not fit. I had a set of casters that I thought would work but they didn’t due to having fine threads. I ended up driving to four different places to find casters with coarse threads, which was aggravating, but once I got everything assembled and the cradle mounted to the engine, I was very happy with it. The fully assembled engine rolled around easily and felt sturdy.

Simple but effective design.

Works well moving a motor around when needed

Used this cradle / stand to test run my Gen 3 LS. Mounting points lined right up, starter was a bit of a struggle but it does fit, and just had to mount the headers backwards. The stand does look a bit flimsy for "heavy duty", but its plenty strong for what it needs to do. Overall good bang for buck.

It's and engine cradle, it's cheaply built but does handle the weight of my sbc. I had to make it a little taller by welding another frame under it and now it functions as a run stand as well. Cheapest cradle I could find and it works as good as more costly cradles.

Fit as expected just wish it had casters that came with it.

For the price it does the job. It doesn't look strong but it's good enough for an SBC. I might weld up some support brackets if I plan to use it a lot or on a heavier engine

It was over priced $90.00- no bolts, no casters! If you send back you have to pay a restocking charge. Bought one at Princess Auto came with all bolts, heavy duty casters rated for a Big Block Chevy ( 1000 lbs) and paid $49.90 Canadian on sale

I needed this to get a 340 off the garage floor, and though I kept it, I would not order another. The fit is not good, with very little care being given to the positioning of the plates that attach to the bellhousing flange. If you try to install an engine onto the fully-assembled cradle, well, it's probably not gonna happen. Mom won't be proud of your words.To get it correctly attached to the engine, forget about the tie bar for awhile. Bolt the uprights to the block, rear plates first, with those bolts being tightened enough that the plates can't pop off the dowels. Then, fight the front tubes into position since they won't align on their own and install those bolts, making sure the bolts have fully passed engaged the nuts. Only then should you attempt to install the lone crossbar that ties it all together like the Dude's rug. It seems easy enough, but you forget that during this procedure, your engine's hanging from a crane and prone to swinging and rotating.A few final thoughts:1) Unless you're in a hurry, get some scrap steel and build this yourself. It's every bit as simple as it looks, there's no trickery or extra gussets that make it better than something a first-year high-school welding student could assemble en masse.2) If this is the heavy-duty version as they claim, I'm loathe to see how crappy the standard-duty version might be. The tubing is both thin gauge and low grade steel (think discount-store computer desk), the front bolt tubes are basically alternator spacers, and the rear plates are only as thick as the dowels' protrusion from the block. It seems solid enough once bolted together with a block in it, but you won't exactly pull a muscle forcing the uprights into place. The design depends mostly on the block and the fact that most of the stresses are compressive, and would essentially work with 1"x1" pine. Perhaps the difference is the hardware? Well...3) I upgraded everything to Grade 8 hardware. Anything that needs to hold up considerable weight like this should have the best nuts, bolts, and washers money can buy. It's an additional expense, but not a huge one. Easier to justify than the price of the cradle, for sure.4) This is offered at a competitive price with other retailers, which means someone, somewhere is making about $50 on it. For an average Joe, this is maybe $10-$15 in materials and an hour or two's time. For a company buying in bulk, it's about $2 in materials, cheap overseas labor, and a lot less quality control than Average Joe will use5) I figured I'd add a set of inexpensive orange-big-box-store casters they sell for their wire racks, but alas--the holes in this are too small. If you do buy one of these, you'll see why I didn't feel good about drilling it for the larger caster studs, even for a bare block.I have a few other engines for which I'd like cradles, but after this enormous waste of money I'll head over to the steel supply for materials to make my own.

very nice, compact. easy to assemble/dissamble for storage.. nice that it coms with the bolts to mount the engine, and holes to thread them into on the front to store them.. i wish it would have came with casters. i had to buy them from lowes and spend 2 hours mounting them. they put welded nuts on the frame to mount the casters, why not include them. i would have paid the extra for them. i had to make 2 trips to the store to get the right ones. for future reference put the casters in the package, and charge extra we will be glad to take the extra cost for the hassle of chasing them down...

I was looking for an engine cradle for an FE Ford. This is the "Big Block" Ford engine used from 1962 until the mid 70's, anything from 352 to 428 cubic inches. Perhaps I was assuming too much to think this engine cradle marked "Big Block Ford" would accomodate the engine in question. Although there were no instructions included, I determined that the plates seemed to have one pre-drilled hole that would align with a hole for the engine mount and the bell housing on each side. I tride to bolt up the Allstar engine cradle, but the alignment of the side plates and the rear plates would not allow the posts to be verticle, so I had to add some 1/2" spacers to the side engine mount area. With the single bolt in each of the plates it seems a bit weak, and in order to utilize the cross piece, which adds stability, the plates had to be in the extreme outside holes. This resulted in the engine being lower in the cradle, which is good, but the engine still sits high off the floor. With everthing connected I lowered the engine down, but found one corner higher than the rest! I don't know if this means the engine holes are not even or if the Allstar is not even, but in either case it resulted first in a bent caster, (see another review of the caster kit) and when I removed the casters, it required a 3/8" shim under one corner when I used a furniture dolly as my mobility means.