March 24th - Build Day 3 - Engine Goes In

A brilliant day today. Glorious sunshine as summer came early and the engine installation went according to plan.

Yesterday my £139 engine crane arrived in bits. An hour later it was ready to use. Bit of an eBay bargain.

Today kicked of with son Dan and I moving the engine and gearbox out of the garage so we could rest the front of the car a bit lower on the axle stands (because the roof of the garage is quite low). With the gearbox/bell housing on the workbench and the engine rolled up to it and the help of my next door neighbour we kicked off with joining the engine to the gearbox - which went very smoothly.

With the two fitted together they hung a the desired 30 degrees. After lunch joined by another volunteer - Mark -  we then moved the engine/ gearbox over to the car and lowered the crane as we walked the engine into the car. It was as easy as that (we had removed the engine mounts before attempting fitting). Once we had the engine in position we bolted the gearbox mounting bolts on first and the fitted the front mounts loosely. Fitting the mounting bolts was a bit harder - we had to unbolt the rubber mounts in order to get the big bolts to fit. Then we attached the mounts to the chassis rails.

After releasing the crane we worked to centralise the gearbox in the tunnel. Then it was a question of torquing up all the bolts and hey presto in a little more than an hour the engine was in.

We did remove the gearbox filler plug before fitting the engine gearbox. Looking at the space available to access, fill the gearbox and replace the plug, that's going to be a tough challenge.

Overall observations - a straightforward operation if you work methodically (and have a couple of friends to help you along the way).