Since Tim is busy with guests at his house, I guess I'll fill in here:
Started this morning at around 10:00AM to install tranny and engine today.
First and foremost was the pilot bearing. A few taps with soft mallet and a tall socket that was the same diameter as the bearing, and it was seated within minutes (this item is what delayed the install last week.)
Next, came the pressure plate installation, followed by the QuickTime bell housing. Spent time finding the torque specs. Amazingly, throughout this day, we found torque specs listed in the ERA, for "general" bolt sizes and grades, to be rather low when compared to my Ford Mustang Chilton's manual. But we decided this is Tim's build so we went with whatever is specified in the ERA build manual so we went with the torque specs there and used Lock-tite as needed.
With a final once-over, it was time to set it up on the hoist and initially, we did try it from the front, which I was pretty sure wasn't going to go and sure enough, we ended up about 6" shy. Plan B: come in from the side.
This worked out after we pushed the car out and then back into the garage to give us more room for the hoist on the drivers side of the car, however, we found the front tire to interfere with the hoist a little bit so we decided it was best to remove it. Tim got his first taste of whacking the spinner with his new lead hammer! Nothing really dramatic if you've ever seen this before, but frankly, I have NEVER seen this done so I found this entertaining. Sure beat removing 5 bolts!!!
With about 4 of us manning the cherry picker and engine, we slowly but surely got the engine into position. I was underneath ensuring the QuickTime would clear the tunnel entrance and engine mount studs were in position. Within minutes, the engine was finally settled into position.
We took a break for pizza and beer and then tackled the transmission. This took a bit of effort as it seemed that initially, it would not mate into the bell housing very easily but we used a bolt to draw the TKO to the bellhousing and I got within 1/8" gap underneath. Tim's son did the same for the upper bolt opposite from my corner and very quickly, the tranny sort of popped into place and mated onto the bell housing.
Once we were all satisfied everything was level (engine was a bit clocked but we took care of that quickly), Tim's son (Mike) torqued everything down underneath the car.
I know Tim's got some pics to post but by 5:00PM, I was bushed but happy everything got installed.