As told elsewhere the engine was bought from RebootGuzzi owned by Pete Morcombe based in France. He is a pleasant chap and gave me much advice. He sent me many pictures before I committed to buy but pictures are never as good as seeing the thing in the flesh so to speak so he is good enough to say if you don't like it when you see it you can still walkaway. The engine I chose was a 1000cc California III big block from a bike built in 1989.

I picked it up from a show in the UK and brought it back to ponder over at leisure. The engine, I was told, was running when removed from the bike and there was good pressure at both cylinders. Certainly it seemed OK and apart from the fact it was filthy dirty and had a few missing bolts (he had stripped the timimg cover off to remove the alternator) all seemed present.





The pictures above show the engine in its raw state. There was quite a bit of surface corrosion and I was a little concerned about this. However a really good go with a wire brush or two soon removed the crud followed by a good soaking with Gunk and a hose down which brought the engine up to a fair condition.



Here the main casing is clean and I had just started to brush some matt black engine paint into the fins. However before that I had soaked the casing in Metal Prep from Frosts to give a good adhesion for the paint I intended to use to make the engine look better as it does hang out the front of the car and is somewhat on view!

During this time I had removed the sump and timing cover to clean. I did not remove the cylinder heads although originally I was going to do a de-coke and grind in the valves. The reason for this was that the engine once fitted is well exposed and I felt that I could see how it ran first and any need to do a top end clean could easily be done with the engine in situ. I then began to paint the engine with Frosts engine enamel - this is quite expensive and I only needed a fraction of the tin; perhaps people should get together to buy some! The timing cover proved difficult to cover evenly and thus in desperation I went to my local blast/powder enamellers who did an ace job for me for £20. I then put the covers/sump back on replacing the oil filter. Why did Guzzi ever think putting the oil filter inside the sump a good idea? Every oil change means sump off with a new gasket.
The next bit was to fit the alternator. RebootGuzzi had supplied a Bosch alternator - the most common, but as I found out not all Cali III engines like mine had Bosch. I replaced the timing cover seal only to find the one supplied by Motomecca was the wrong size and for another type of alternator. Needless to say they didn't have the correct size, nor did other places. A quick whizz on the internet found me a place in Salford - Arrow Engineering - who couldn't have been more helpful - they found me the right seal and sent it overnight at a cheap price so thank you John for all your help.





These show the engine together with the alternator cover after painting. The next step was to fit the Guzzi conversion adaptor plate.

I have a picture of the conversion kit elsewhere on the site but as a reminder here it is



The first thing to do is to fit the plate to the engine. Now Phil supplies all the bits but the instructions to fit are a bit on the brief side to say the least - a Gregory trait.
Offering up the plate showed one immediate problem - at the bottom of the engine there is a projection which I can only assume was a casting for an oilway or something in previous engines now no longer used. This fouled the adaptor plate. It was necessay to grind out a semi-circular area to accommodate this.



You can see the ground out area which was done slowly until all fitted. This was smoothed and painted. Before fitting to the engine 4 M10 x 70 bolts must be placed through the plate from the engine side. The two at the top must be ground down to allow them to fit against the lugs on the engine. These are gound such that a larger flat is formed - be careful not to go onto the bolt shaft itself. The bottom two bolts must fit in recesses cut into the fins of the engine. I cut these out using a sharp old chisel (you'll knacker it).



This picture shows one side where I've cut out the fins to accommodate the head of the M10 bolt.

The plate was then fitted to the engine using M8 bolts with spring washers (not supplied).



Before



After



The next stage is to fit the new flywheel. Of the £580 the kit costs this bit, so Phil tells me, is the bulk of the cost. I can believe it as setting up a job like ths would take an age. Therefore do not drop it or damage it at all!!.The centre of the flywheel needs a new cintred bronze bush and seal - both standard 2CV bits mine bought from ECAS. Drift in the bush with a suitable socket after soaking the bush for a couple of days in engine oil. It will fit easily. The flywheel (plus shrunk on starter ring - see elsewhere) is then fitted to the crank



This shows the flywheel in place held by the supplied high tensile cap bolts. The next step is to fit the clutch. I thought I'd been lucky here as I'd inherited a new clutch along with the kit when I bought it. But needless to say with my luck it was for a pre 1982 car and you'll need a later clutch to fit the flywheel. Off to Fleabay and a new clutch for just under £60 - anyone want to buy a clutch for a pre 1982 car?



Clutch fitted - note the clutch alignment tool in the centre of the clutch. You'll need one of these to ensure when you mate the gearbox and engine the spigot will go into the spigot bush you've just put in the flywheel and also the splines of the driveshaft align with the clutch plate. If it's a bit off centre then putting them together is nigh on impossible.

Next step is to fit the gearbox to the engine. You need a friend here as the bolts wobble on the adaptor plate and trying to line up 4 of them and hold on to the gearbox whilst gently lowering it and not losing the end of a finger or two is difficult. Ken, an engineering friend of mine, came round to firstly have a laugh at the whole project but also he is pretty good at spotting any pitfalls before you start. He identified a couple of areas where we needed to slightly reduce the lugs on the engine and the whole thing went together a treat. Here is the finished product ready to go into the car:





The next stage was to fit the engine to the car. I recruited my old friend Richard to come up for the day from Oxford to help - I needed muscle to do the fit and he is not lacking in that department, also he is interested in the project and wanted to see how far I'd progressed. We lifted the engine/gearbox on to a trolley jack balancing it carefully on a sheet of wood and manoeuvred it into the engine bay. It was then just a case of lifting the unit upwards on the trolley jack and fitting the rear into the gearbox support and the front to the hangers on the chassis cross bar. This went fairly easily except at one point where we had fitted the front on the hangers and had not fully tightened the gearbox end. The whole unit pivoted around the hanger bolts and tipped forwards. I was a bit dismayed at this as I'd hoped the engine/gearbox would be balanced and be supported evenly - heaven help us if the rear gearbox bolts come undone when driving! All the bolts were fully tightened and it was starting to look like a car.









The above pictures show the engine/gearbox fitted with a shot of Richard after a hard mornings work - bacon butties followed. I could now start to fit the drive shafts and brakes - see Assembly 2.