Thrust bearing carrier

[Pastapesto]

Hello all

Wanted to pick your brains on this one, hope you don't mind.
Last night in the very early hours of the morning, I was trying to put the
gearbox bellhousing back on my recently rebuit/overhauled gearbox.
By the way, it's a early S3 coupe, 4 speed. Anyway, when I went to fit the new thrust bearing onto the old carrier, I found that the bearing was much too large for the carrier. Now my qustion is - As I think I have the correct bearing (supplied by the excellent Susan Miller) do you think I have the wrong carrier?
Some other things you need to know, everything was in place when I got the car in bits, but when I sent the gearbox off for rebuild, my very experienced Lotus gearbox man said that it was in fact it was (I think) an Escort/Cortina 1300 gearbox. Apparently a common bodge years ago.
He re-used the case but changed the internals to the correct type & did a lovely job putting it all back together. He never saw the bits in the bellhousing as I sent it by courier as a bare casing, all nice & filthy.
The old bearing carrier fits perfectly on the output shaft as it should, it's just that the bearing seems too large for it.
Is it a case of Lotus using a larger, more havy duty carrier & bearing? and maybe I have the 1300 type? is that right?
If that is so, are they hard to get? anybody got one?

Please help,

Many thanks

Adam

[tdafforn]

how much is the new bearing out by...
There were reports of a set of bearings getting into the market place that was over size..
Tim

[Pastapesto]

Hi Tim

It's a lot out, somewhere between 1/8" to 1/4". Sorry I did not measure it but it was just much too big to be an interference fit.
I guess that as it had the wrong gearbox the P.O. just used it as a complete unit & it must have still done the job ok, maybe not for the long term. That's all I know about it really, thanks for the reply.

Adam