Engine and Gearbox in!

Some very good friends of mine, Brad and Tracy, kindly lent us their van again to collect my Engine and Gearbox from RoadCraftUK in Shoreham. Once home the job of getting the engine out of the van was a lot simpler this time, compared to my brothers, as the engine was loaded just with the engine pallet. This meant there was plenty of space to raise the engine on the engine hoist. 

We removed the headers plus the plugs, leads, ignition coils/modules and dip stick, having already fitted my Dad's engine we new these items would be in the way of the additional strengthening bars fitted on the AK Gen3 chassis. We bolted the gearbox in place and then set about maneuvering the engine hoist to get it in just the correct place. We carefully lowered the engine, having what seemed like only mm of space to clear the strengthening bars! Once the engine was almost in place we raised the gearbox up to ease it on to the engine bobbins. All in all a very successful day.

Wednesday/Thursday - I drilled and tapped holes in the chassis for the gearbox support bracket and fitted this in place. I then moved on to unbolting the two long bolts attaching the gearbox to the bellhousing and fitted the clutch slave bracket, before bolting/torquing the long bolts up again. Brian at RoadCraftUK kindly showed us the correct way to position the pushrod on to the clutch fork, apparently a few people have located this incorrectly (bolting the end through the clutch fork rather than locating it against the outside hole - see photo below) 

I am really pleased with progress so far, particularly now that my engine and gearbox are in!