Gearbox and headers

Transmission location

After some playing about, I found that the initial location of the gearbox was okay. If I moved the gearbox to clear the bolt on the shifter locating plate, the bell housing touched the chassis. So this was not an acceptable option.

The real problem was the location of the fuel line.

Fuel line ran on inside of chassis rail. Shifter cover plate removed and taped over to stop contamination

I moved the fuel line to the under side of the chassis rail. To do this I drilling out the rivets holding the clamps and re-fitting them on the underside of the chassis rail. A bit fiddly, but worth the effort.

Fuel line clipped to under side of chassis rail (looking up)

This gave about 15 mm clearance to the chassis, plenty of room.

Clearance can now be seen between the chassis rail and the shifter location plate

Now the locating plate was bolted back in place, using a small bead of Heat Resistant silicone to seal the plate. This required the tail of the gearbox to be lowered to allow the front off side bolt to be fitted.

Headers

Now it was time to fix the headers in place. The gasket was pre-marked with the manifold side and the orientation. A small amount of Heat Resistant silicone was applied to the block side of the gaskets and to the manifolds. These were then clamped in place with five high tensile bolts at each side.

Shiny header/manifold fitted

Another view of a header in place