Agreed, but it can't ever make contact with anything box side can it? It's the friction plate at the front of the action, for the given diameter of the shaft and bearing slide... So in my mind it should just be flywheel housing face to leading edge of friction plate. Which is 60mm

Yes 90mm is from the very tip of the shaft to the bearing slide tube. But it's 79mm from the bell housing face to the bearing slide tube... So that's our max travel. Then it's 60mm from flywheel face to the buldge of the friction plate. Surely the smaller number is on the correct side? 60mm of...

Front face for you James:

Hold on.. Just done the maths.. There's 95mm of gap to take up, but actually we need to remove the 35mm from this, as from the shafts point of view, it's thin air... This measured across the face of the cover plate at the high points. So 60mm of gap to take up, and 79mm of shaft... So it's not...

I've been assuming that John Eales is above such a mistake.

Oh bugger.. That's wrong too...

No... ****... It's staring us in the face... 90mm vs 95mm

A 13mm, deep, halfords socket is roughly the right size, and both bush and shaft check out by comparison

It's 35mm from the straight edge across the cover plate, to the buldge on the friction plate drive flange (so it's a bit further to the start of the splines)

It's the spigot (that's the input shaft, yes?) Is the right length overall, I was just worried about the splines bottoming out before the tip of the shaft bottoms out... As the splines will bottom out at the friction plate drive flange, and I don't have a measurement for that

So I need to measure the outer face of the cover plate to the outer face of the friction plate.. Is that the thinking?

There's no gear stick or assembly, just the very base of the shifter on the top of the gearbox... Ive tried selecting a gear with it and it doesn't work... Only goes so far... And I'm too scared of damaging it. I have turned the flywheel from underneath with it bolted in the 5mm gap position...

I can do that... I don't want to mash them up though... What's the best way to extract?

Added another measure..

Not sure if I can answer that. I feel like things "slot in" up to a point.. Then it goes no further than that 5mm gap all around. Even gap top and bottom etc. The only only only wierd bit I notice it that when wobbling to try and get it to line up (once it's at this 5mm point) all the movement...

I also checked the dowels... The rhs dowel is a couple of thou thicker than the lhs, but a 12mm ring spanner fits over them both. M12 bolt slide easily into the dowel holes in the bell housing, but the fit wasn't close enough to be accurate... Then I discovered that this handy 1/4 inch drive...

Please excuse the crayon style..

just had a chat with mr ashcroft as he returned my call from this morning. He's confirmed the input shafts is correct (19mm for a v8, as aposed to 22mm for tdi). He's advised that I'm possibly running out of spline too.. advised that I grease the input shaft splines a little to see if that's...

Great, that make sense - thanks. I'll give that a go shortly

measurement wise, I'm not sure what to do with that info if I'm honest :) grease - it was only a little bit around the inner diametre of the spigot bush - not enough to cause hyrdaulic locking issues.