haha Gab, your pretty right. I'm still looking back at my progress so far and thinking "how the hell did i do that?"

Rusted old plug is out at last. I was going to take a photo but my house was broken into today.. Some lowlife stole my phone, ps3, and various other electronics. Has really put me off doing anything more to it today. At the moment iv got new plug in and gearbox on the floor.. Gotta figure out a way to get it back up on a jack on my own and back into the car. I'm really just looking forward to working on the car from the top end and getting off the floor... Actually I'm really just looking forward to driving it again and knowing the coolant is going to hold.

Was the house secure ????...all windows closed and locked, doors locked ????
Hope you get ya stuff back......highly unlikely, but the hope is there.

nah mate, they fingered the screen door lock and the glass door wasn't locked.. i was home. But I'm deaf in one ear. Creepy f**k left a meat cleaver sitting on my chair.

Only been robbed once before (the GPS out of my gfs car) but i know the drill. Cops had nothing to go on.. neighbors were out, painters next door didn't see anything, guy wore gloves.. I'm well aware I'm not gonna see any of it again. But he took some sentimental things too which is what I'm seeing red about.. Plus my bday present.. oh well, lesson learned.

anyway..

Gearbox is in.. everything hooked up. Just gotta get those other welch plugs out while I am at it. And refill coolant and ATF..That's the workload for tomorrow and I'm keen as beans to see it all pay off.

I'm in the middle of doing a headgasket for a mate...1999 AU Fairlane VCT....what a bastard of a job to get the cam out, and head off....

I never thought i would say it.. But after this experience I'm kind of looking forward to doing any further work away from the floor. Hell.. after doing this I'm even feeling more confident about doing a head. I'm pretty sure i will be doing an engine swap next if anything. Hopefully a tickford motor or something with some more vroom.

Well i have a really bad feeling about this.. Got the car all back together yesterday.. took it for a drive around my block. And its making a scraping noise in any gear when the car is moving.. Only when its moving. Soon as the car slows.. so does the noise. If i have it in gear and handbrake on.. no noise.

Good news is.. no leaks to be seen of.. bad news is.. its losing coolant real fast.. If i didn't know any better id say that welch plug at the back of the block is now sitting in the bell housing because for some reason my loctite didn't work. (Even though it did perfectly fine for the others on the side of the block) and there is now water gushing into the torque convertor..

Which would mean doing it all again.. I may cry.

Well finally an update..

Since the last time i posted, I fell pretty ill. Finally got well enough to tackle this again.. This will be the second time now iv pulled the box out myself and thankfully i had a better setup than just 2 scissor jacks to get the box out.

Seems i was wrong.. My back welch plug was not leaking. Regardless i found someone selling stag and applied that liberally around the plug. I was expecting a wave of coolant when i dropped the bell housing but thankfully the car had held all the coolant last put in it. Iv put that down to a air pocket.

Found my main issue to be that i had pinched the steel line for the auto trans really badly.. (I thought it was weird how hard it was to put back on last time.) So it was off to repco to buy some hydraulic auto trans line. Hack sawed the bent up line off and put the new stuff on.

So with the box all back together, tailshaft, exhaust etc.. started her up. And it still drove like an absolute dog.. slipping gears, making a sort of ticking/steel on steel rubbing noise, and then finally i finished a lap around the block and turned it off out front of the house.. Inspected.. couldn't see anything. Went to start it back up to move it back inside for another day.. Now it wont start at all. WTF!?!

Edit: No crank at all.. Yes iv checked CTRL_LMP