best way to alter a ford bell housing to fit a k series without adpter plate and bell is part of the g/box caseing please ??
front wheel drive

If the bellhousing is part of the gearbox casting (MT75?) then you have only two options that I can see.

1) Make an adapter plate.
2) Remove the the bellhousing from the gearbox (i.e. cut it off) and modify the gearbox to accept a different bellhousing that fits the engine. Obviously this is going to involve quite a lot of work.

I guess it might be possible to partially remove the front of the bellhousing and then cut a section out of a FWD K series gearbox and have it TIG welded on, but whether you could achieve the accuracy required I don't know.

I think this is possible. I am considering altering the rover pg1 gearbox to mate to a type 9. I have photographed the work I have done so far ubt it is not yet on my website.

An issue you have to consider is which engine you have. I have a 1.8 which has a larger flywheel to the 1.4 and 1.6. Caterhan used the 1.6 (i think) which means the flywheel fits easily into the aluminium bellhousing produced by caterham. I have one of these bellhousings and recently got hold of a caterham flywheel and clutch cover.

If you have a 1.6 you will need a 195mm clutch from a ford escort. If you have a 1.8 and want to convert the pg1 gearbox casing you will need a 215mm clutch.

I think you can add a 10mm plate of ally to the pg1 gearbox casing to get the spacing you need.

If you explain what you are doing in more detail I might be able to assist. As I said I have already cut up a pg1 gearbox and modified it so it should fit a type 9. I have also gathered all the parts needed to do the standard caterham conversion so I might just do that instead now.

Let me know if you need any more info.

I think Robin Hood used to do a adaptor plate for the MT75 gearbox to K series.

[Edited on 27/1/07 by Hammerhead]

May be easier to use the rover FWD gearbox

Davidwag

I used a front wheel drive gearbox bell housing and made an adapter plate to mate it to a ford type 9.

Alfa 164 box and V6 engine.
Wasn't too bad, I cut the plate from 25mm aluminium and had it machined to suit gearbox.

yeah johnmor thats what I'm attempting with my rover gearbox. Where did you get your 25mm peice of ally from? I am using 10mm, do you think it's too thin?

I bought a piece of 300x1200 25mm aluminium from Aalco.

Cant remember exact price, i think it was around £40.
I first made template out of 25mm MDF and used a router to machine it to see if it all worked, bolted together and tried the clutch. when i was happy i cut the outside shape using a Jig saw and lot of parafin.

I then gave it to a mate who machined the aluminium to suit, also had to slightly modify the thrust bearing and make a spigot bearing from phospher bronze.

so far so good.