If the pinion preload is already set and the pinion seal is fine you can leave it, then you mark up the position of both the carriers and take the center out and unbolt the spider gear carrier and bolt in the LSD. The marks will get you in the ballpark for pinion/crown wheel position but you will still need to check and set gear interface, backlash and runout. It's fairly straight forward if you have the right tools. This guy here has a great video on setting up an english axle.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtzU6YS0m9I&list=PLaNARHAzB0JQi6-TRfQ0FfcN7Drq-uHCk

On watching again he doesn't check interface - youre supposed to rough adjust the side to side position and then check your tooth engagement - you can use bearing grease to check it but there are proper gear contact pastes/paints you can get.

 

Ok so things were going great with the re-assembly, pinion bearing on, races in, top bearing in and seal in.
 

 
Was putting the crown wheel on the LSD and was about to button up the last bolt and noticed it felt a bit sketchy, pulled it back out and checked it, sure enough no good. 
 


Thread in crown wheel not damaged thankfully, another bolt went down the hole just fine, I think it may have worked itself loose and damaged the thread at some point. 



Silver lining too, notice the recess for the bolt on the Blackline? It steps down 10mm thick, which is almost same as a standard carrier which doesn't have the thickness to the hub area - the standard carrier has a 2mm step down where the bolts are, making it only 8mm thick. I am giving up 2mm of thread on every bolt, I will see if I can pick up 6 new bolts tomorrow morning but only if they have 12.9 grade. 

thanks for the explanation Mark, links and pics.
It brings back memories of a month smelling of gear oil.
If my diff does end up dying, or needs cracking open again, I'll do the same.
 
Unless you have a spare one in that magic wardrobe of yours Marty, alongsside the Compomotives, RS steering wheels and EFI manifolds.
 
Hope you can find the bolts tomoz.

Nah no spares in the wardrobe sorry..
We can go share postage on 2 for 1.

Blob a bit of loctite on those bolts too for added security.

Yah the other 5 have Loctite on them which will be fun when taking them out tomorrow if I manage to get longer ones .

Since I lucked out with the bolts I pivoted to my box of goodies. Figured I'd start on the number plate - so the hardware got some electroplating then it went back together.


 

 
Tried some of the bright zinc additive for the pin, made it a lot easier to polish up, so I think for the rest of the bits I'll add a few drops just to make my life easier.
 
I actually thought ahead with this one and had two nice new Allen key dome heads to attach it back to the car.


 
and just because Marty asked, here is a nice shot of the new hardware on the bonnet safety latch .
 

Oh I just remembered I forgot to post a follow up for the dent / distorted boot lid, he did a great job and got it as straight as he could considering, the only thing that would make it better now would be a new panel.
 

 
 

Managed to snaffle some high tensile bolts with longer threads today, glad I did because I checked the depths and I was only getting 4 threads on the old bolts... this is why - look at them side by side.




The LSD carrier is like 4mm thicker to where the bolts sit compared to the factory carrier. Basically lost most of the threads on the standard bolts, the new bolts are like 5mm longer and still don't bottom out!


 
I would have preferred if they didn't have a coating on them but at the end of the day it won't make any difference. They took 74hm which is well below the max rating for that level of bolt and 25nm more than stock, I wasn't comfortable leaving them at 47 - seemed too low for a crown wheel.
 
Next was on to making a jig up for setting the pinion pre-load, needed to get my dad to swing over to be an extra set of hands for this, got everything in spec - for those who are interested the preload is 20 to 26 lb/inch at the bolt with the seal in. I converted that to a KG scale reading so I could use a hanging scale on the jig and got it within spec across 10 readings, took the jig off, spun it a couple of times, gave it a tap and then checked it again and actually had to tighten it a little more to get back in spec.

 
 
Next was rough setting the crown wheel position and checking the gear contact patch - I didn't have marking compound so did the paint and grease trick, the white teeth were evenly covered in blue grease before rolling it through the pinion, it looks good but I will get some marking compound to be 100% certain.
 

 
 
Then I went to set the backlash....... Turns out my dial indicator has gone missing.... no idea where it's gotten to but I spent an hour looking for the bloody thing before getting over it and coming inside . I'm sure it's not far but I've been out in the garage most of the day so I'll kick on tomorrow.
 

 

Sometimes not finding something is a blessing in disguise. I still haven't tracked down my dial indicator (I think it's at a mates house) but I was just going over everything and noticed that the clearance is CLOSE on the lsd housing bolts, it's a lot chunkier than the normal center so everything is a little tighter in the housing and I'm not comfortable with the less than 1mm of clearance in this spot.


 

 
I'm going to pop the center out tomorrow and grind down that face a little, gotta love old school castings, the other side has about 3/4mm clearance . 

Nice progression Mark, lucky you found the clearance issue as that could later on cause silver oil..
That brought a memory back with my Quaife in my mk2, same with the cap heads but on mine I had to grind the whole side away, while there I polished the oil cavity and sides mainly the top where oil spits or sprays from the crown. I have no idea if it's a worthy thing to do but must help the oil glide around better, I just wanted to test a few die grinding burrs out !!

Polishing always helps the oil return back to the bottom a bit quicker - less surface tension - so I'm sure it helped in that regard. Plus why not hey?


I got the grinder out - I'm sure the neighbors loved that at 9am on a Sunday! Clearance done, it took longer to mask up and clean the damn thing to avoid any swarf getting in the pinion.


 

 
That's plenty now, also managed to track down the dial indicator, it was at my mates place so he's going to swing past with it tonight. With any luck the diff should be in before I go back to work on Wednesday!