All I can say is that it’s an incredibly tight fit!
Installing the engine & gearbox took about four hours of slow, careful manouvreing of engine & gearbox suspended by hoist above chassis. Centimetre by centimetre the assembly was lowered into the chassis & the engine hoist pushed towards the car.
Nervous moment when Jamie accidently dropped the engine from about 5 cm on to the front chassis cross bracing but fortunately the carefully applied bubble wrap meant we got away without any damage. Difficulty in getting the prop shaft to engage with the gearbox, however, by applying a strap & lifting the gearbox tail from within the car it suddenly slid into position J. Having overcome this obstacle the engine got caught on the alternator (unfortunately causing scratching to chassis even through the bubble wrap) requiring loosen to clear the chassis members.
Once the engine was finally resting on it’s mounts the challenge began to get the bolts in the gearbox mounts. This necessitated all engine mounts being loosened to provide valuable millimetres of wiggle room. Jamie finally got the gearbox mounting bolts in place but the engine then had to be pushed & shoved, moved up/down with the hoist, to enable the mounting bolts to line up with the rubber engine mounts.
To tighten the left handside engine mount to block I thought I’d remove the oil filter to make access easier. Wrong! Oil filter wouldn’t budge & strap wrench just bent the filter.
© 2011 Chris Jobling - All rights reserved
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