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.
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| Engine Installed |
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