This is for the few that might be interested...
Well,
I've had this a while, but I didnt want to post it up until I knew it was back 100% driving. I bought it last October/November with a noisey bottom end, and it turned out it needed a gearbox rebuild too. Found it by accident when I was in the UK, and the condition knocked me back. It was only after I drove it that we discovered the problem, so after a bit of bartering it was mine!
The car is a 00 Mini Cooper, half leather interior, 55k on the clock and it is IMMACULATE. Cant find any rust on the yoke.
After I got it back to Ireland, I eventually brought the crank to Howard engineering for them to reground. Once that was done a mechanic friend, Albert, fitted it all back together with another gearbox which I'd sourced. Turns out this gearbox was a crapper and the diff pin sheared in half leaving the car with absolutely no drive.
So I was nearly back to sqaure one, but didnt want to pay someone to do all the work again. Due to some inspirational talk from a mate, Neil, I decided to get the old gearbox rebuilt (just had a slightly crunchy 2nd, I've seen much worse stay on the road) and fit it myself.
Got the rebuilt gearbox back from Simon Evans (rallies Minis) on Friday and started work on the car friday night in Neils garage. We disconnected everything underneath and called it a night.
Arrived in on Saturday late enough and started disconnecting the rest of the stuff. Another mate, Gary arrived at around 3, and we made great progress, managing to get the engine out, and flywheel housing off. Couldnt go any further without flywheel pullers.
Sat morning:
Sat evening:
Sunday afternoon, I headed over to Albert to grab his pullers from him, and then pulled the flywheel off and got the old box off. It looked like this:
Nice!
This is the new box to replace it:
![[huzeeee]](/styles/overclockers/avatars/3.png){kind=avatar}
Once helped a mate drop a sick box out of his mini in the street, on a hill, in sheffield. Had to carry it across two roads to the house, up the stairs and into the bath so he could degrease it and start the rebuild. Gotta love abusing student houses!! 
