Engine and Gearbox Fitted

Engine and gearbox being fitted.  Wooden blocks used in place of the engine rubbers to find the right position for drilling the holes.  Despite checking and re-checking the engine and gearbox did end up a little further back than planned.  Possibly due to the fact that one of the Tiger engine mounts does not sit flat with the plate on the chassis.  When the engine rubber is in place this is squashed on one side to take up the difference.

Final result seems okay, there is some small amount of the propshaft splined tube showing outside of the rear of the gearbox, just not as much as expected.  In a way this might be helpful.  It will mean that the Rally Design gear lever remote ends up just that little bit futher towards the rear of the car - every bit counts here as the gear lever gets very close to the dashboard when this particular remote is used in the Avon.

Drilling the bolt holes for the gearbox mount was a bit of a challenge - getting the drill down inside the transmission tunnel, especially as I had already fixed one side to the chassis.  The solution was to use an oversize hole at the top and then drill a correct size hole at the bottom, by drilling down at an angle.

 Thanks to Pete for loan of the engine crane and Gary for help with the fitting, including use of his Avon as a reference for measurements.

Joining the Engine and Gearbox

New clutch release bearing fitted to the clutch fork.  Lubrication applied as instructed in the clutch kit.

Engine and gearbox fitted together.  New cap head bolts, thread locked and torqued up to the correct amount.

With the Tiger ERA sump fitted the gearbox mounting holes in the lower crank case are no longer present.  Only the upper five bolt holes can be used.  Two dowels are still available to ensure gearbox alignment.  Next job is to crane the engine into the rolling chassis and make good the engine mounts.

Flywheel and Clutch

To add the new ring gear to the Tiger lightened flywheel the former was put in a hot oven and the latter in the freezer.  Once fitted the ring gear was held in place with weights until both had returned to room temperature.

Comparing old (Focus) and new lightened (Pinto) flywheels.  On the scales the Focus weighs in at 9.8kg and the Pinto at 5.8kg.  Hopefully this will give a good performance boost in terms of acceleration, along with a more responsive throttle response.

The flywheel bolts were shortened so that the same amount of thread (15mm) showed through the rear of the flywheel as in the original Focus installation (the lightened Pinto flywheel is thinner - no prizes there).  All good so far.  However, the edges of the bolts clash with the tapered edge of the flywheel.  Also the socket fouls on the flywheel.

Plan B was to use another, original length, set of flywheel bolts and use washers as spacers.  Two washers were needed for each bolt to compensate for the thickness of metal removed from the flywheel.  The washers nearest the flywheel needed filing down (from 5mm to 3mm) on one edge.  Okay, the edge was not there until I filed it!

Flywheel bolts installed with thread lock.  Each was marked to show that it had been torqued up to the correct value.  In the centre is the spigot bearing fitted.  Pushed in just flush with the outer edge.  It would've gone in further, but here it should provide maximum support for the gearbox input shaft.

Fitting the clutch using an old borrowed gearbox input shaft as a centring tool (Thanks Pete).  This made it very easy to get the perfect alignment of the clutch plate.

Gearbox and Bell Housing

Here is the Type-9 gearbox and bell housing as bought secondhand from ebay.

Before separating the the two the clutch release fork was removed.  To do so required that the clutch release bearing be removed.  The bearing was destroyed during the process.  No problem as a new one is provided in the new Pinto clutch kit.  Once the gearbox and bell housing were separated they cleaned with lots of rags and lots of white spirit.

I attempted to remove the reverse stop from the gearbox, but in the end I gave up as it did not seem to want to move and I did not want to damage the gearbox housing.  I tried my Rally Design remote and it functions fine with the original reverse stop still in place in the gearbox.  There is a replacement reverse stop in the gear lever end of the remote.

Bell housing cleaned and degreased, ready for painting with Hammerite.

The oil seals on the input and output shafts were replaced.  The sleeve for the clutch release bearing has to be removed to change the input shaft oil seal.  Upon refitting a new cork gasket is fitted.

Here is the gearbox, repainted, with new oil seals.  The only oil seal that I could not change was the one on the speedo drive shaft.  I removed the side access plate, but when I looked inside you can removed the speedo drive shaft, but it looks like you can't get to the oil seal on the other side without completely dismantling the gearbox.  Something I don't plan on doing!  Fingers crossed this tiny oil seal doesn't let me down once the gearbox is in the car.

A new gasket was fitted between gearbox and bell housing prior to mating the two.  If this is not done the gearbox will empty its oil via the hole that the gear selector rod exits through.

Gearbox and bell housing bolted back together, torqued up as per the Hayne's manual.  The clutch release fork will be reinstalled, along with the new clutch release bearing, at a later stage.

New gearbox mount was trial fitted prior to putting the whole assembly aside, to wait for the engine to be tidied up.

eBay is my friend

Up to this point I was still not in posession of a Type-9 five speed gearbox. It seems to be getting harder and harder to find a good example at a fair price (excluding fully re-conditioned units at £400, inc. bell housing).


Finally I won a good Type-9 on ebay for a reasonable price. Problem was, like so many, they are in other parts of the country. A 250 mile round trip was needed to pick this up. Apparently, this unit was bought as a spare by a Robin Hood owner. It was removed by the Robin Hood owner after driving the Sierra home and appeared to be working fine at the time. Fingers crossed, we'll find out if that is the case (much) later on.