[Mick O'Malley]

Yesterday, spurred on by Froggyman's and Lucky's good wishes and encouragement, not to mention the crisp sunny weather, I wandered down to the cave and decided to start working out gearbox mountings. First job was to get the trolley jack out of the way, so I lay a piece of 4x4 across the top rails and took the weight of the back of the engine with a ratchet strap.



I was then able to crane the gearbox roughly into position. It was immediately apparent that, unless the engine/box were to be at a crazy nose-down attitude, the interfering frame cross member would need to be modified.





A new length of inch and a half box complete with the two forward facing stubs will need to be lap welded beneath the existing cross member (suitably cut to clear the gearbox tail). With so much welding work on the frame being needed, I think I'll ask my ever accommodating friend if one of his boys would like to come in on a Saturday for folding money, with a suitable donation for consumables. This is what we did for the substantial frame mods needed on the Rover V8 engined Phaeton I built back in '92.

Having reached this impasse I decided to offer up the prop. just to see how it looked for cutting and shutting. Imagine my dismay when the female end's internal spline proved to be way too small for the gearbox's male output spline. Aaaaaargh!!! The above mentioned miserable git had said "There's not much I don't know about these Rootes propshafts". Obviously mistaken!

So, it looks like going back to the relevant FB groups to find someone who really knows what they're talking about, so that a correct prop may be sourced. 30 quid and 150 miles of petrol down the pan. Disappointed? Just a tad!

Regards, Mick