With the body and chassis apart, it was also time to pull the drive train.
On the face of it, you’d think it would be easy enough to haul the engine and box out with it this stripped down.
The headaches become a bit more apparent from this angle:
- Vacuum tube crossmember to sump clearance
- Exhaust manifold to chassis clearance
- Transmission shift tower positioning between chassis rails
Decided this wasn’t going to work, so pulling the manifold off was more sensible. Interesting there is a redundant bracket and threaded fitting for a handbrake cable on the passenger side, presumably this is for LHD markets.
Not a lot of clearance around the oil filter and pump.
The starter motor and bell housing are actually in between the chassis tubes.
As well as the tight fit, there are some other foibles of note.
Don’t know why this section is so corroded compared to the rest of the chassis. These are the threaded bosses which the screws on the top of the transmission tunnel / bottom of the fascia panel thread in to.
This is not a standard gearbox mount as far as I can tell. A section of solid bar has been welded on to the lower rails, slotted to allow the handbrake cable to pass through, and threaded to accept a rudimentary rubber mount.
All of this would be because our car isn’t running a normal Elan spec 2000e Ford derived gearbox. Our car has a 5sp ZF box more commonly found in droopsnoot Firenzas.