The Engine, Bell Housing and Gearbox require assembly. Having taken advice from various blogs about using a method to remember which bolt comes from which location, I disassembled the Bell Housing from the Engine and used a cardboard template to store the bolts in the correct order. The clutch thrust bearing is revealed inside the Bell Housing along with the Clutch Cable and bleed pipe. On the Engine side, the Clutch and reduced weight flywheel are visible. It also becomes apparent why it's sensible / necessary to remove the starter motor before taking the bell housing off - the latter has a machined surface which mates with a seal on the underside of the starter motor. The Gearbox was delivered with bolts hand-tightened into the casting and with some fitted in the Bell Housing. Discarding the bolts that were fitted to the Gearbox, but using those supplied with the Bell Housing, the Gearbox was mounted and torqued first to 30Nm, then to the required 68Nm.
Most other builders seemed to find refitting the bell housing with gearbox to the engine a very straight forward task, but I found it quite time consuming and fiddly. The Gearbox was resting on a pallet, supported in an upright position by a couple of wooden chocks. The engine hoist was then used to offer the engine up to the bell housing. I chose to do it this way because I wanted to avoid putting the entire weight of the gearbox onto the drive shaft. A touch of spline grease was added to the drive shaft. Adjusting the height, angle and distance of the engine on the hoist relative to the bell housing was a delicate process. I became concerned when I couldn't get the two surfaces to close up, but then remembered it was a friction fit with dowel pins requiring some effort to press home (which required the gentle use of a persuader when disassembling). I fitted a couple of bolts on diametrically opposite sides and, using finger tightness only, got the Bell Housing flush with the engine. The remaining bolts went in and were torqued up in a criss-cross pattern to 47Nm.
The final step was to protect the heat shield in the transmission tunnel from the sharp edges around the outside of the gearbox. The collective wisdom seems to recommend wrapping the gearbox in the polythene bag in which it was shipped.
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