[Spits] Transmission installation

[ccullen16 at cogeco.ca]

Looking for a little advice here. I am in the process of installing my transmission back into my spitfire. I did this
once before, but that was 12 years ago, and my memory on how smoothly it went in is a bit hazy. My question is this....
I have the transmission back in place (sort of) with the transmission on the guide dowel (as well as the three engine
studs on top of the bell housing. The problem is I can't really get the bell housing of the transmission to mate
uniformly around the engine. On the top area the bell housing is flush to the engine, on the sides it is about 1/3 of an
inch out, and on the bottom closer to 3/4 of an inch. Last night as I was doing this I contemplated bolting in the
surrounding bolts to see if this would flush up the bell housing to the engine. However, previous, applications of
"Irish Persuasion" have lead to some unfortunate results in other applications with my Spit. So, at about 10 pm last
night I decided to sleep on the issue and perhaps query the list. Should I back out the transmission and make another
attempt at mating the transmission so that the bellhousing is completely flush around the circumference of the engine
prior to tightening any bolts? Or, is the fact that the bellhousing is flush to the top of the engine good enough to
tighten down the surrounding bolts/nuts?

Thanks,

Jim Cullen
74 Spitfire