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[terry paget]

You may not have enough room but if you can get a bolt or stud screwed into the engine with a nut in the gap  between engine and gearbox leaving a space for movement at the gearbox end  then you can spread the gap with the nut against the gear box. Hope that makes sense. There are avaiable very small hydraulic jacks for small gaps, Best of luck I think you could do with help from a local OOf member.

I don't feel comfortable forcing something that shouldn't need to be forced.

I would try to get gearbox and engine back together again and then slide the box in and out to free up the splines.The question is how to get it back together again. At the moment there is a one inch

h gap all round, and it resists being pushed back together. What I need is some longer bolts. The larger bolts are 19mm AF hexagon heads, 52.5mm long, 10.49mm diameter and 1.75mm pitch. The smaller bolts are 13mm AF hexagon head, 38.5mm long, 7.86mm diameter 1.25mm pitch. With some longer bolts I could attempt to pull the gearbox and block together again.I cannot jiggle the gearbox back into the the block.

I do not understand what has happened. I appreciate that with the plate connecting gearbox to body the gearbox could not come off. But now I have removed the nuts connecting plate to gearbox it should be free to pull off. Maybe it is alignment, maybe it stopped on the rusty end of the splines and is stuck there.

Given some endless thread of the right variety, or some long bolts and nuts, I could force g/b and block apart. But it should not need forcing, should it?

[Mr Gav]

Just a thought but have you lowered the jack while removing the gearbox? When I changed the box on my Senator as I was drawing the box out I had to lower the jack slightly each time as the engine and box are pointing slightly down, without doing this the box would jam on the splines and it`s the same going in, you have to get it just right.
Don`t know about the Omega but the Senator had a needle roller bearing ( spigot bearing ) and being almost the same box then it may be the same.
Hope this helps.

[henryd]

You guys talking about the pilot bushing?

Spigot bush innit

[terry paget]

Just a thought but have you lowered the jack while removing the gearbox? When I changed the box on my Senator as I was drawing the box out I had to lower the jack slightly each time as the engine and box are pointing slightly down, without doing this the box would jam on the splines and it`s the same going in, you have to get it just right.
Don`t know about the Omega but the Senator had a needle roller bearing ( spigot bearing ) and being almost the same box then it may be the same.
Hope this helps.

Thanks for that. No, I did not know that the angle was critical, I presumed if I pushed the jack back supporting the disconnected gearbox it would separate from the engine, allowing me to lower the jack and extract the gearbox sideways. It did not work out that way.

[Mr Gav]

Don`t forget that the front of the car is jacked up too so the engine is pointing downwards and your trolley jack is trying to move in a horizontal plane, essentially cranking the back of the gearbox up against the line of the splines.
Hope you get it sorted 

[Vamps]

Don`t forget that the front of the car is jacked up too so the engine is pointing downwards and your trolley jack is trying to move in a horizontal plane, essentially cranking the back of the gearbox up against the line of the splines.
Hope you get it sorted 

That is along the lines of my thinking, though the last clutch I changed was in a Mk2 Transit in 1985, on my back on the drive......

[terry paget]

Don`t forget that the front of the car is jacked up too so the engine is pointing downwards and your trolley jack is trying to move in a horizontal plane, essentially cranking the back of the gearbox up against the line of the splines.
Hope you get it sorted 

Good point. I was strugging to keep it horizontal.

[Andy H]

Not sure if this is relevant because it is so long since I last took the gearbox out that I can't remember 

Can anyone advise if the engine is balanced on the engine mounts? or does it want to fall backwards as soon as the bellhousing bolts are removed?

I cant remember whether I rigged up an engine steady to stop it or whether it was in balance and the hoses were enough to stop it toppling

[05omegav6]

The Omega one is pretty stable , it can't really go anywhere...

[dbug]

Don`t forget that the front of the car is jacked up too so the engine is pointing downwards and your trolley jack is trying to move in a horizontal plane, essentially cranking the back of the gearbox up against the line of the splines.
Hope you get it sorted 

  Sounds like an "alignment" isue to me, particularly as it won't move in or out - solution is to carefully lower/raise (probably lower in your case) the jack supporting the box unil it frees up - should then just slide off splines with a bit of jiggling about

[robson]

Whatever you do do not release the jack under the gear box otherwise you may have major damage. Try very small movements of the jack and try to push it back together again. I would get some long bolts and use these to support the gear box as you pull it away from the engine using very slight adjustments of the jack. The more I think about this the more it sounds as others have said that it is an alignmment problem.

[Marks DTM Calib]

You guys talking about the pilot bushing?

Spigot bushearing innit

Corrected for the Omega application

[terry paget]

Gentlemen, I have a theory. Please read, contemplate, and comment. If nonsense, tell me.

The story so far.
All went well up to the point when I began to pull jack and gearbox away from engine. It came an inch, then stopped. I hit it with mallets, tyre levers, ropes and wives, but it was stuck. Andy H mentioned that there was a plate above the gearbox that he removed some years ago doing a similar job. I checked, he was right. I disconnected the plate, but the gearbox was still stuck.
I reckon in all that heaving about I have jammed the g/b input shaft splines in the friction plate splines and tensioned the pressure plate springs. That tension keeps the whole thing locked up.

If I am right, the cure is to put the gearbox back in its place, relaxing the pressure plate springs. Then I can remove the box in the usual way. As Andy H said.

[Kevin Wood]

If I am right, the cure is to put the gearbox back in its place, relaxing the pressure plate springs. Then I can remove the box in the usual way. As Andy H said.

Maybe. If you put a couple of the bellhousing bolts back in and pump the clutch pedal a couple of times (will need to reconnect the hydraulics) it will allow the friction plate to centralise itself again, too. I'm thinking it's possible that the heaving has shifted it out of line with the spigot, so there is now no angle of the gearbox where the input shaft can easily slide.

[robson]

Fully agree with Kevin get it back together and start again  after having a rest from it.