So I decided that I could get on with a couple of small miscellaneous jobs. So I emptied the front of the garage and got started on the windscreen washer installation.  It was at this point that I noticed that the front trestle was only resting on 1 of the uprights not 2. A quick panic saw me stuff the wheels under the car in case it fell off.  I decided to then not touch the car until Sarah came home who them repositioned it whilst I lifted up the front of the car. How it came to be like that or in fact how the car had not fallen off the trestle I do not know.  It would not have been pretty if it had especially if anyone had been underneath at the time and I am only glad that I spotted it in time.

After this stressful period and some more calls on the mobile it looked like I would have to go and pick it up myself, and Roy kindly leant me his Volvo T4 :-)  if I leant him the Saxo, sounds like a good deal to me!  So a trip to Winchester to see Peter and then a chat, he had got his car sorted so we packed up the crane and drove back home.

Roy was already there and Daren turned up shortly after. First job get the car on wheels and off the trestles. Which was easy with 4 people lifting and 1 wiping out the trestles.  The car now looked more like a car. To allow as easy an installation as possible we pushed the car out of the garage and then put the rear up as high as we could on axle stands.

Then a hive of activity saw the crane being build and the engine and gearbox being attached to each other.  Most things went smoothly enough, we noticed a few missing parts such as the Top hat and circlip for the speedo drive which will be an arse to fit after the engine goes in. Will try and get Caterham to fit at the PBC before the SVA.  The only other issue we had was that the manual was out of date around the plate at the bottom of the bell housing for the dry sump reservoir, it says use an 'O'ring but there is neither one or anywhere for it fit, so we used some proper gasket paper and built are own.  Alternatively you can use silicon sealant.

During the afternoon I had to make the weekly trip to Halfords to buy some AF Allen keys and whilst I was there bought some cheapo Castrol running in oil.

Every thing mated up easily enough as we had the engine nose down and then attached the gearbox and bell housing to the engine vertically from above. At this point we also attached various hoses for the heater and cooling system as it can be a real hassle to do when the engine is in the car. Before we got the engine into the car Daren had to go and then we had the job of getting the engine and gearbox into the car.  First off we protected the car with lots of cardboard and tape, around the bulkhead of the tunnel, front cross members and painted tops of the body work, so we didn't scratch anything up. Then we got everything in the air and slowly positioned everything in place.  Many thanks go to Roy and Peter who spent a lot of time grovelling around under the car. I manned the crane and jacks supporting the parts and did what I was asked.  Down a bit, forward, back, down a bit etc

It all seemed to in easily enough although we had some fun with the engine mounts as we did not have the correct bolts.  Also we should have added the exhaust manifold as it was a bit of a pig to fit when the engine was half in the car!  We ended as it was starting to get dark, we rolled the car back in and put everything away. It now looked more like a car than before and it is a lot easier to imagine what it would be like.

Many thanks again to all the help (Roy, Peter & Daren) as I would not have been able to do this myself.

(click on the pictures for an enlargement all 640*480 and aprox 150K in size)