engine stuck to gearbox!

I have got a spare genuine fork. But they are so cheap. Paddock do a re-inforced one for £12

I'm sure I used paddocks cheapo one very little difference between that and genuine tbh.

Mine was britpart with a 4 or 5 mm strip welded behind it. Nothing wrong with Britpart stuff you do get what you pay for. Some britpart stuff is surprisingly good some stuff is very poor depends whats your fitting and you can 90% time tell the quality of stuff before you fit it then its not the stuf at fault its the fitter/mechanic.

On this occasion the fork looks same as std item as they are also know to fail early on. No fault on the OP's part all you can do is weld a new one up or fit a HD one.

Ok... Ok... i take back what i said about britpart... well at least partially, my rear crank oil seal was one of thiers and it leaks like a bugger... but then it'll probably turn out i fitted it wrong!
anyway... got the old knackered fork out today and lo and behold... the pivot ball is seriously non-spherical! guess thats the reason for the premature wear on the fork. New pivot on it's way... couldnt stretch to a genuine (£45 was cheapest i could find!) but hoping the non-genuine is still good for the job. Presuming it wouldn't be a bad idea to grease the ball and its corresponding depression in the fork - moly grease, or copper?

now have clutch cover off and noticed a ring of wear where the release bearing pushes onto the splines - cover plate was newly put on about 18-20 months ago. Is this normal? it's a "valeo"... should i be greasing the release bearing also... or could this contaminate the clutch?

Am also changing the aformentioned rear crank oil seal, and have taken off flywheel to facilitate this.... glancing at the haynes manual it states that new securing bolts should be used on refitting the flywheel... damn dont have any! the ones i've just taken of are again only 18-20 months old... will i be ok with these, should i apply thread-locking to them on refitting? or will i be struck down by the god-of-haynes for not following the word?!

i await the wisdom of the elders....

dont like to say i said so ,clutch bearing does wear its way through but takes a long time very few get all the way through before clutch is worn out ,bearmach do a wider contact face early type release bearing that doesnt do this,just locktite old flywheel bolts back on i never found a problem and ive fitted a good few,you dont need to grease cover or brg it will only fly off

Thanks for that! It now also seems that it wasnt the rear crank oil seal that was leaking... fitted a replacement 200tdi block about 2 years ago which involved swapping the flywheel cover as the replacement was out of a disco... i'm sure i tightened the housing-to-block bolts to the correct torque at the time but now on checking they seem to have worked their way loose - perhaps loose enough to let some oil through? should i be using thread-lock on these?

gasket between block and housing should eliminate need for sealing bolts,you could put some silicone sealant around main bearing joint and seal housing where it meets block around crank