Well I'm sorry to tell you Mildman but you can't fill the gearbox through the gear lever hole! And I can't see how you could fill it through the breather when it's still in the car either- the breather pipe is at the top of the gearbox, and it is a sort of a hook shape, and it is only about 1/4" dia. and the air would have to come out of that breather as the oil displaced it so it'd be a pretty neat trick if you could fill it through the filler in place!

Damn that plug must be tight. I'll assume that when you heated the housing you aimed it square to the gearbox and heated the ali housing around the plug, and didn't aim the flame at the plug like your pic shows....

Well I would've thought a bit of heat would've done the trick, nice explanation too Morgan! Next on the list is a blunt cold chisel and clubhammer and whack the feck out of it in an anti clockwise direction.Aim to get a bite into the section above the thread and to the side of the square head, the shoulder of the plug. As for worrying about heating and damaging bearings , the heat is unlikely to do any damage, they are usually fitted using higher temps and most bearings fail because of poor lubrication and/or dirty oil. Though if you cooked your alloy housing it may char the oil causing some lumps of crap to form. But you can give it a quick flush before filling it with fresh oil..Good Luck

ITs better to heat the bolt not the housing as this will break the seal easyer(i do it all the time at work) I highly susspect that gas touch has not got enough heat Usally need to get them redish then wait for them to cool a bit,also -rost(rust) off- from wurth works veryy well As a rust penitrator skuse speeling ( i failed english ahhaha)..

Maybe I just didn't heat it hot enough....it wasn't glowing red - just good old burn yourself hot.

In response to NZman - I tried a bit of heating housing - a bit of heating bolt...

I'm tempted to have one more crack at getting it REAL hot.....it sure has been a prick of a bolt, even crank bolts aren't this much trouble!

Here was my tools for the day's efforts (albiet unsucessful)

if you can weld..

find a dirty old socket (one that you dont love too much!) that fits snug over the filler plug...

slide it over and weld the mongrel on good and proper

then you can use your ratchet on the socket or better still a nice long breaker bar..

this method will gain victory!

please get a huge muthaf__ker nut welded on,
it's the only way i did it with my CA box, and borrow a huge ring spanner, and crack the bastard while it's hot!!, can u drive to an exhaust shop?

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NOTHING wants to be glowing. Aluminium doesn't glow, it get does get a bit shinier weld it is molten but you don't want you gearbox housing ending up as a puddle on your garage floor. Alumium while having a lower melting point is a great conductor of heat so it might take a bit of heating as it sucks the heat away pretty quickly. Heat it until it is just a bit too hot to touch. There is no point whatsoever in heating the plug. When it's hot start giving it the treatment as stirlingmac described.
Also I see the plug it still quite square- if you gave it a really hard time I would have expected you to have rounded it by now?

Losing motivation to have another crack - didn't round the bolt second time round - I'm starting to get a feel for "this dirtbag ain't gonna budge" prior to the bolt rounding.

I've had a look into dodgy ways to fill the gearbox too - I haven't been able to sucessfully get any transmission oil into the gearbox through the hole where the gear stick usually goes. Going to be real hard to get it through the breather pipe - would need some hoses or pumps.

Last one I just thought of tonight - if I lifted the car up real high at the back, removed the tailshaft from the back of the box - couldn't I fill it up with oil out the back of the gearbox? I imagine this one will work - haven't piloted it on the dead 60 series box yet....just thought I'd throw it up there if anyone had any thoughts...

Have you considered gripping a 4" vice onto that nut and turning the vice with something really big? You could drill your own hole (so to speak) and bog it up later or do what I would probably do... drive the thing into the ground then replace the gearbox.

Worst case I'll just remove the gearbox and take it down to the exhaust guy (who I'm sure has lots of welders...)

Whilst it's in the car it's a bit trickier to go medievil on it's arse...

I'll concerntrate on getting the car wired up and started in the next week - and if everyone shoots down my fill the gearbox from the tailshaft interface....well then I'll have to drop the box.