Hey great, that's good news. I'll pull the car into the garage and pop out the tach and give it a whirl.. I have been basically running without a tach for three years now, and hate to think how high I have been actually reving the poor thing..
The 5 speed is out of a Spyder Veloce ( pretty much any year will do..).
A friend of mine designed and manufactured 4 adapter plates to mate it up with the stock ford bellhousing. I'm sure that I have the specs for the plate around here somewhere if you wanted to duplicate another one. He sold one, used one, gave one to me, and still has the last one ( but I am going to use it..) The tranny is a bit taller than the Ford unit, so it tilts the motor down slightly at the back, and up at the front. ( no way to tell by just looking at it, but with the tall block it reduces my hood clearance to less than 1 mm, with the carbs sitting on the foot well..)
I machined off the tranny yolk and welded on the Ford yolk, and had to slightly shorten the input shaft for crank clearance. The pilot bush is custom ( just machined brass ) and the pressure plate is stock Ford, the disc stock Alfa.. same diameter..)
The shifter comes out about 1 inch or so further back than the Ford, so a tiny bit of frame material had to be removed. The shifter is cut down to 1 inch, and a short extension is slipped over it ( adjustable shifter length, cool. Except that this tranny normally has a 17 inch long shifter, so the mechanical advantage of a 2 inch long shifter is not so good, mine is about 6 inches long, and still a bit hard to move around.)
The tranny mount is custom, and the speedo cable is kind of jury rigged up with the Lotus elbow, which worked fine at first but has since stopped. I'm sure it's something simple, but i'm not removing the body just for that.
The advantage of the Alfa tranny is lightness, a better first gear ratio, with pretty good ratios all around, and of course the 5th gear ( just heaven let me tell you..)
The disadvantages are a harder pull on the shifter and not a very quick shifting tranny at any rate. They are also a somewhat weak syncro, and not strong enough for any 200 hp monsters ( I've had no problems yet with my 1750 motor, which must be about 130 hp anyway..)
Overall I like it so much that I'm going to put another one in my Cortina, I know the Ford T5 will fit the Cosworth block, but it won't fit in the tranny tunnel of my Mk1. We'll see how that holds up..