Having set the date of 12th Jan to get the engine in, I pressed on with the prep work. Once again, do all the bolts fit and operate properly (i will explain why post engine fit…..
First job, fit gearbox. This meant removing the bell housing and fitting this to the gearbox from inside before re-mounting it on the engine. Beware! each bolt is different and some fit from the back and some from the front. I labelled each one as I took it out!
Biggest problem was the starter motor which has three bolts, the top one furthest in being a complete b*tch to get out and even worse to get back in. The lesson I learned was a small 6mm socket on a 1/4″ ratchet or as I did a 3/8 ratchet with flexible extension. I also made extra room behind the bolt head by doing up this bolt first on reassembly. This meant starting with the bell housing about a cm from the engine. I was lucky that the gearbox splines went in on the third attempt.
Eventually I had it all back together with some help from Derek who sent me a longer bolt for one of the lower points when I stripped the thread on the first.
And a mere 2 hours later……….
Biggest challenge was the nearside engine mount (RHS of this picture). The bolt thread didn’t fit in the mounting until I drilled it out a tad, and the bolt head was a little too big for the sleeve on the mounting it was going into. Finally, the bolt wouldn’t tighten!
I got the gearbox mount and offside mount in place and then removed the left hand mount (hoist still in place) to sort it out. The reason it wouldn’t tighten was that the very bottom of the thread on the mount had rubber in it from the mount itself. I cut that out and all went in finally.
Final stage of fitting engine looked like this:
