Life Is Not Meant To Be Easy.

Once the engine was fully fitted and the tranny mounts in place, The clearance issue with the bell housing came into play. The bell housing starter opening was resting on the stainless steel heat shield which is not an ideal situation but as I could depress the heat shield I opted to just put an insulator between the bell housing and the shield as removing the engine is such a major task. The trouble is, the more I thought about this solution the less I liked it so on Saturday,the engine came out again and the bell housing ground 6mm to provide clearance.

One of the things I had not thought about prior to removing the engine was the solid stainless fuel line that exited low down in the transmission tunnel and as it turns out, was totally inaccessible with the engine in place. With the engine out of the chassis I attached a stainless fuel line and clamped in position so I can fit it to the fuel rails.Thank goodness I thought of this as the engine would have to come out again when we try to fit the fuel lines, you have to have a win occasionaly

We then attempted to refit the engine which with all the knowledge we now had, it fitted with a minimal of fuss as far as this thing would allow or maybe we just expect the unexpected. We had learned to balance the engine dead level on the hoist as it would sit in it's final position, we had a lever to twist the engine as it was lowered and we knew to bolt the chassis mounts to the block mounts and lever the mounts into place, as a matter of fact, we were getting pretty good at this.

With the engine in place I proceeded to fit the Boss Alternator Kit which came with all the brackets, belt and tensioner. The tensioner had me beat for a while as when I went to draw the tensioner in to fit the serpentine belt it would not move, ok, what now. After looking at it for a while and posting on the Cobra Forums about the problem and getting plenty of replies about the orientation of the belt which I knew, I grabbed a breaker bar and socket and gave it an almighty heave to which it responded with a bit of a jolt and came forward so smoothly and with plenty of tension The problem turned out to be that during the tensioner assembly process the nylon membrane had got wedged between the moving parts and caused resistence and me not wanting to heavy hand it didn't overcome the resistence, however a breaker bar did and it now works a treat.

To get the gear lever in the right position, I got a Pro-5.0 center shifter and after cutting an inspection hole in the trans tunnel I fitted the shifter and grabbed all gears immediately which surprised me with a stationary engine. The center shifter came with shift locks to prevent over shifting on those ham fisted gear shifts but this provision was so bulky and would not allow the rubber boot to go over it so I consulted Mr Google and he informed me that the TKO-600 transmission had built in shift locks and recommended not using the after market type so half an hour in the lathe and they were gone.

and this is the finishes item.

Another job that was done was to fit the fuel level sensor into the fuel tank which presented it's own set of issues, namely, how do you drill a 25mm hole in the fuel tank and not get the ingress of aluminium shavings in the tank, No big deal, just tape an extension to a vacume cleaner, position it under the cut line and go for it. Thanks to Guy Elliott for this little tip.

I was able to run the vacuum extension around the base of the tank and am satisfied that all shavings have been vacuumed up.

That's all for today

See you next time

Cheers Russell.