Engine Installation Time

Cracking weekend, installed the engine & gearbox and really feel like some progress was made. I realise I should have taken some photos of the process but the heat of the moment took over and I forget so you'll just have to see the final result. I've installed engine & gearbox into cars before and this is a fairly straightforward installation, low level and onto an open chassis. But I've not handled an engine this size / weight / value before. I wanted to avoid damaging any of the ancillaries, or scratching the polished chrome,  or crushing any of the brake pipes. I removed all the plugs, brackets etc that stuck out from the engine to avoid any snagging. I reckon the total weight was around 300Kgs, easily in the range of my crane (but not the old bits of rope I used to use) so I bought some pukka lifting slings. I used a 1T sling wrapped around the engine mounts to take most of the weight and a ratchet strap around the gearbox back to the crane - an idea that I took from "Tommy Boy" - this allows easy control of the angle of attack which is quite steep to get the gear lever into the transmission tunnel. I raised the engine clear of the chassis and rolled the chassis underneath, lowering it and letting a trolley jack take the gearbox mount once it was level enough. It helps to slacken of the nuts on the engine mount bobbins to allow a bit of movement. the whole job was trouble free and soon had it down on the mounts and secured with no damage done. I've also fitted the gearbox mount, drilling & tapping the chassis with 4 x M10 bolts, I'm still not sure about which way up the gearbox bracket goes, neither seems ideal, so I'll check with the factory.

Engine Installed

There's a long list of jobs that I'm itching to get on with, cooling system, power steering pump fuel pump and final connection of the clutch pipe before I can set about fitting the body but time is against me this week and I found I'm short of a few minor bits & pieces so the next phase will have to wait for a couple of weeks.

Engine & Gearbox Arrive

Big week this week, the engine & gearbox have finally arrived. I'm really pleased with the work that Jez at CPP has done, I think it looks great. I didn't get a lot of time this weekend, not least because it was Stoneleigh, but I have unwrapped it all and managed to get the engine up on to my trolley. 

Engine!

Hydraulic Clutch Bearing

What did confuse me was the clutch release bearing, I almost contacted the supplier to tell 'em they hadn't included the clutch release arm. Going through the documents I found that they had built the gearbox with a RAM hydraulic clutch release bearing. I've not come across this before and I couldn't see one used in any other installation. A quick look on The Net turned up an installation & set up video from the manufacturer, it was fairly simple to set up. There are two ports on the bearing, with adapters supplied for standard 3/8 fittings. The upper port is for the bleed screw, I felt this would be near impossible to reach once the bell housing was on and engine installed (and I was worried about dropping fluid inside the bell housing when bleeding the system), so I made up a small extension to take the bleed screw outside the bell housing. The advantage this gives me is that I don't have to buy a slave cylinder. If time permits next weekend I'll get the engine / gearbox installed.