Not running again

["Wood,Andrew" <alw@domain.elided>]

A couple of weeks  ago  I posted a plea for help, under the heading 
 "Running Again", in connection with rough running of my Stag after it had 
been brought back to life following 3 years off the road. A combination of 
the advice of various people helped enormously and the engine now runs fine.

Unfortunately what I did not say in my original post was that the reason I 
needed to get the Stag running again was to move it to the garage of a new 
house. I managed to drive it onto the hired trailer and towed it to the new 
house without any problems. I then started it up and tried to reverse of the 
trailer. It seemed to go into reverse OK but when I let the clutch out it 
did not move. I tried selecting reverse again but could not move the gear 
lever out of reverse. I tried several more times but nothing hapened. There 
I was with the Stag stuck on a hired trailer which was due back in a couple 
of hours and no apparent means of getting it of the trailer into the garage. 
Fortunately it was parked on a very gentle slope and I was able to let it 
down off  the trailer  onto the road by using the winch on the trailer so I 
could at least get the trailer back. The next stage was to get it up over 
the pavement and down the slope into my new garage. I could barely move it 
on my own but fortunately help arrived in the shape of my new neighbour who 
wanted to get his Volvo into his drive and couldn't because the Stag was 
parked in front of it.  (As a means of meeting the neighbours this sure 
beats "can I borrow a cup of sugar"). He was feeling fit and we eventually 
managed to push it onto the downhill part of the drive and let it run into 
the garage before I gave it a mental kick and shut the doors with no desire 
to see another Stag for quite a while.

This was not to be as two days later I saw somebody in the house directly 
opposite open his garage doors and drive out in an immaculate Java Green 
Mark II Stag - coincidence or something out of the X Files. The sight of 
this one will hopefully spur me on to get mine back on the road again and 
obviously I am going to have to do something about the gearbox so I have a 
couple of questions:-

1) Is it easier to take the gearbox out from underneath on its own or lift 
out the whole gearbox/engine unit from above?

2) I don't think I would be comfortable tackling a gearbox rebuild myself so 
would probably go for an exchange unit. However from the symptoms (gear 
lever stuck in reverse but no power coming through to the prop shaft) is it 
possible that something simple has happened which could be fixed without a 
new gearbox needed. Unfortunately the Haynes manual gives no guidance.


Any ideas gratefully received.

Andrew Wood