One line of investigation regarding my gearbox issues(bearings failling very quickly) is that it might be a misalignment between the engine and gearbox ie the gearbox input shaft is not aligning precisely enough with the engine crankshaft spigot bearing.

Now the engine / gearbox setup when used in the production (tintop) have dowels on their flange faces to align the gearbox onto the engine. Matching the Gearbox (MT75) to the Zetec these dowel /dowel holes do not match up so cannot be used to centralize/align the gbox to the engine.

Have others just removed and disgarded these dowels and assume the flange bolts around the gbox are accurate enough for alignment ? Is it an issue ?

Has anyone dialled in the bell housing (accurately centred it on the engine) and
installed new dowels ? If so any tips will be much appreciated !

Just checking, you have stuck a spigot bearing in the end of the crank ?

Yep !

quote:

---

Matching the Gearbox (MT75) to the Zetec these dowel /dowel holes do not match up

---

the dowels fit fine!

Thanks I'll go recheck

Done a recheck(d0wel locations at 3&9 0'clock) but unless I'm missing something I still don't have the engine dowel location tying up with the gearbox holes .As you can see from the pictures the engine locations fall in the are outside the gearbox flange with only the blanking/spacer / sandwich plate to locate instead of locating directly with the gearbox ???
Zetec Blacktop -> Mt75
Sorry but given up trying to upload the pictures.

You havent still got the shitty plate behind the flywheel have you? Bin it, the one on the inlet side should fit fine and the one on the exhaust side might need looked at.

Yes I have . I'll remove it and take a look. Many thanks for your help.

youll find that even if you could get it to bolt up the starter wouldnt fit!