At 08:41 AM 5/27/98 -0500, Bill Eastman wrote:
>..... just completed pulling the engine out of the A last Monday night.
..... We did it without pulling the floorboards but I don't know how much
difference that would have made. .....
>
>..... we pulled the dog nut and the crank pulley. That helped a bit.
Then we pulled the timing chain cover- the timing marks point straight down
and are in the way. ..... Is this typical? .....
>
>My concern now is getting it back in. Any advice on a different technique
would be greatly appreciated. .....
I did pull the engine and tranny together from my MGA once, just to test
the technique. NEVER AGAIN!!! Pull the engine first. I have it down to
90 minutes single handed. If I still need to pull the gearbox, another
15-20 minutes. I have scratched some paint off of the steering rack with
the crankshaft pulley, as this is a very close pass. This may vary a bit
from car to car, so if it looks like a problem just remove the crankshaft
pulley.
When it comes to removing the gearbox, you need to remove the shift
extention first. For this you have to remove the shift boot and carpet
from the front tunnel area. Then you remove at least eight #10 screws to
remove the top cover from the front tunnel section. Then you can remove
four bolts and pull off the shift extension. After that the tranny has
lots of clearance to slide out the front.
I can think of only two reasons why the book tells you to remove the seats,
floorboards and tunnel. First, possibly for the original warrantee
coverage, the factory may not have wanted anyone to disassemble the
gearbox, but to remove or install it all in one piece (not to remove the
shift extension). Second, I understand that the very early production
units of the MGA did not have a separate cover on top of the tunnel, so it
was impossible to remove the shift extension before removing the tunnel.
In summary, don't believe everything you read, and only half of what you see.
Barney Gaylord
1958 MGA with an attitude
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