mk1-forum.net

Thanks. That gave me the confidence to get a bit more aggressive with it

Socket on an extension slipped over the ball did the trick. All gears engaging and disengaging properly.

I locked the layshaft to 1st and 4th, then torqued up the input and output nuts to 150 lbft with the “big wrench”, and everything seems to be working ok - no binding Baulk rings etc.

Curiously, the donor cone gearbox seems to have shorter studs for the end cover than the B type, so I’ll have to grab some longer studs or UNC bolts, but that’s no big deal.

Shorter studs - I'd guess that your donor gearbox was an 850 magic wand-type as these had an engine mounting bracket (22A30) which mounted directly to the speedo housing so the studs only had to go through the steel sheet of this mounting. Cooper & S gearboxes used a bracket (12A361) which was attached via a square aluminium adaptor block (12A360) and the studs had to be longer to pass through this adaptor.

Yes, that’s exactly it Nick. Simple enough to fix with some longer bolts or studs.

Well this ended up as a bit of a build thread, so figured I might as well post photos of the finished assembly.

Missing lock tabs for the main diff casing studs, but apart from that and fitting/shimming the transfer gear housing I’m pretty much done.

It was certainly a challenge to build a 333 box from scratch using all NOS gears, and wouldn’t have been possible without the members of this excellent forum, especially the helpful photos provided by Ricardo.

Now I just need to pull the engine, get it rebored +30 and fit it all back together

Lovely thing! Well done.
I'm sure you're onto this but I can't see a seal on the gearchange shaft going into the box and the knuckle on the end of that shaft is upside down (bolt goes downwards).

Andy

Thanks Andy.

There is actually a new seal there, but it’s one of the later hybrid metal outer / rubber inner bush type from a rod change ‘anti leak kit’ that I had spare.

I just flipped the linkage knuckle over, thanks for spotting that.