Hi Folk,
After fitting my rear wheels I decided it was time to start with the stripping of the front wheels and axle to enable me to get to the timing gears. I spent Thursday removing the front wheels, disassembled the front axle and support assembly leaving me with the timing gears and housing to remove. Sorry I missed a point where I jacked up the front end and supported it with some wooden blocks( thanks for the idea Charlie

) preparing for the big engine tear down. Today I spent most of the day removing the pulley, timing gear cover and gears. What I battled with and still not got it off is the idler gear hub. The workshop manual directs you how to remove the gears and goes on to say then remove the idler gear hub. They don't mention how difficult it is though, I imagined it would just literally come off with a slight pull, well after applying various penetrating oils then petrol and tapping with a rubber mallet I was able to get it to move about 2mm continuing to spray penetrating oil. To add, the oily grime in the housing is also about 2mm thick

. So that is where I am now.
Folk, where am I going wrong? please help. Initially I was rather concerned about stripping the engine especially the timing gear area as it is a first for me, but after chatting to the motor engineer who is going to rebuild the engine, he only requires the block including the crankshaft and pistons, so I decided to bite the bullet and got cracking with the stripping as explained above. Can't wait for the engine to be rebuilt, in fact I was hoping to get the block etc. into the engineers on Tuesday next week, but now with that damn hub I am stumped

Mervyn.