my skoda estelle that i need help with

Oh...you bought that car! Firstly go onto the Skoda OC facebook site - you will find lots of knowledgeable people over there. Parts are relatively readily available from Skoparts International - or Paul Wyatt as he is better knowm. You will find him on the OC site and his own FB Skoparts Int site.
Don't worry about the flywheel being visible...it's normally covered by a tin plate but it's unlikely to come to much harm unless you're planning on going stage rallying. Your engine mounts look goosed - you can get a set new for about £40 from Skoparts. The gearbox is only supported at the front mounts - the back attaches to the engine and is held in place by it. The piece of wood should not be there - the mounts should support it. Front gearbox mounts are still available....I think they are under £40 but I could be imagining it. The Haynes is very useful and will cover most of what you need to know but the wiring diagrams are curse word.

There is no gearbox dipstick - but there is a filler in the hatch in the pictures...there is also a plug half way up the gearbox - to fill the box to the correct level you remove the plug and then full until the oil starts to come out of the plug. The throttle cable is basic - a standard universal cable from bay for about £20 will be fine...just make sure you get one long enough. It attaches to a pivot that comes from the accelerator pedal in the car...there is access in the drive tunnel off the passenger footwell. Haynes is your friend!

great buy for that sort of money

way back when i was skodastop i built this

isn't that the engine dipstick and its in that position cos the engines been replaced by a FWD one from a Felica?...

Hi.
That is my old engine. I sold it to the owner before the one you bought it from.
I drove about on that engine as it was in my estelle for about a year before I fitted a Peugeot engine.
There never were any covers for the gearbox that I can remember.
The engine was in my 120L five. It is indeed a fwd felicia engine with a rwd sump and other such bits on it.
I always meant to get round to sorting the exhaust, essentially taking out the 90' bends and putting curves in.
It was a good engine that went well. Did 95 etc.
The only issue I had was with the dizzy. It has a splined two piece shaft and it started jumping and being out of synch. I had to weld it together and grind the welds back. This was all done in a hurry one night but I then used it for 6 months like that and it never gave any issues.
The other thing is you'll need an electric fuel pump as that engine originally had an electric in tank pump.
To wire the engine up you just need to feed an ignition positive to the distributor. The engine should still be in good nick. It was never an oil burner and I used to rev the nuts off it. :-)
Yes it was my engine but I never did any of the work to it so can't really tell you much about it. i.e what is what.
However I know it was a good engine and I suggest you stick with it. :-)
Good luck.
Be nice to see it again in person one day.
Iain.

i plan to sort the exhaust out with a very small scorpion box, ive asked for a tig welder for xmas so hopefully i can weld a nice stainless system and manifold as i don't like using my curse word mig to much.

The dizzy will be perfect. I ran it for 6 months like that.
It's splined and meant to be an interference fit. All I did was weld it to stop it coming off.

I don't think there is a blanking plate on the head or block. . It's cast without one as I remember looking at it.

Don't fret about the engine or exhaust. It should be perfect. Even the dizzy is timed up. :-)

I can remember the night I took that engine out. Must have been February 2011 !

There is no point in sticking twin Webers on it unless you are going to do some fairly radical tuning - unless you want a world of hassle and big fuel bills....and MOT fails on emissions. It looks like it has a hefty Weber on it (is it a DGAS?) which is probably already over fuelling it - you don't need twin 40s until you get over 100bhp (and even then it's borderline) and they are expensive - not just to buy (manifold, linkage, carbs) but also to run and they regularly need rebalanced to keep their tune. The Skoda pushrod engine is hard to tune and getting over 100bhp is not easy - lots of people claim to have big power engines but are very rarely able to prove it. I've spent quite a few years now fiddling with various versions and have numerous rolling road graphs to tell the tale (often of woe). If I were you I would build an engine with the carb you've got now and see what it does - or go for bike carbs...Bogg Bros will make a manifold to fit and then you just need to find some roughly the right size. Much easier to set up, better on fuel and won't drown the engine if you aren't doing 6000rpm all the time.