[Anthony]

I would think you need to at least check for proper alignment, if too far out, then you ruin your tranny input.

Lakewood sells the dowel alignment kit, but you need to pull the old dowels out, as they are too short to use with the lakewood bushing kit, which welds to the surface of the bellhousing.

What I did, actually was the same as the Kirkham's, was I kept the original engine dowels. Instead of machining a bushing, I got plumbing 3/8 pipe, which has about a 0.493" ID, and about a 0.700" OD. I reamed the pipe to .500" with a drill, the same diameter as the alignment dowel. I drilled out the bell housing to about 0.750" (actually I think I used 23/32") , as said above. I cut off a piece of the reamed pipe, and slid it over the dowel, through the enlarged alignment hole in the bellhousing. With the block plate installed, I moved the bellhousing until I got proper aliognment, but I noticed that I think you really need to place ALL bellhousing bolts, and torque to proper tightness, and then check for final alignment before welding the pipe pieces in place to the bellhousing.