Hi all, what started out as what I thought would be an easy job is snowballing. I was trying to replace an ugly fabricated g'box tunnel with an LT77 tunnel of flea bay. Front bit to bulkhead no problem, but the transfer lever is too close to seat box for the other bit of cover to fit. The gearbox is an LT77 50A0170880D serial number which is screaming in reverse and very clunky from 2nd to 3rd and 3rd to 4th. So thinking may as well look for a 2nd hand box while I'm messing about. Thing is its mated to a 3.6L VM boat engine which I think is the reason it's all sitting about 2"too far back. The bellhousing looks weird, slave is on the drivers side.
Does anyone have any idea which bell housing may have been used for this mod? I've also read that VM's (albeit the 4 cylinders) have a different spigot size so only fit some LT77 boxes so any info on this would be great. From what I can see it looks like original (2.5 petrol) engine mounts have been used and the gbox mounts have on drivers side been fitted further back. It looks like it's adjustable to two positions in what looks like another set of bolt holes and on passenger side mount has been butchered I think. Pics aren't great but any opinions would be greatly appriciated. Not burn it! SWMBO has already suggested that

Ahem, Mr @jamesmartin your expertise is very much required please....

Ha ha. That's kind of what I had my fingers crossed for

cant see enough of the bell housing to say but vm lr boxes have longer bell housings like the disco box ,spigot is smaller as its a ball bearing not a bush and yes box has been bodged back to fit engine

Cheers James
Hopefully better pic attached.
So re smaller spigot bearing size, (sorry for stupidity) presumably my LT77 has a different sized shaft from most other LT77 boxes. Does that mean that my only real option for a second hand LT77 is to get one off a VM engined Range Rover or failing that have mine rebuilt?

Also if above is true I presume that I'm stuck using the earlier and weaker type suffix D gearbox as it was only early Range Rovers fitted with the VM ad far as I can see?

jamesmartin said:

cant see enough of the bell housing to say but vm lr boxes have longer bell housings like the disco box ,spigot is smaller as its a ball bearing not a bush and yes box has been bodged back to fit engine

Click to expand...

Just trying to think out of the box here (bit late for bad puns I know), but as the VM has bearing as per pic fitted instead of bush, could I just get a generic bearing with a larger centre diameter eg to match the standard spigot bush from 200tdi etc? Meaning as long as I swapped the bellhousing to my longer one I could use any other LT77?