Well, I got my head and cams in the mail and started putting the motor back together finally. I got the head on, all torqued up, put the front timing cover on, sprockets, etc. Went to set the valve timing and put the chain on, wnd I found my motor won't turn more than about 60*. After some examination I conluded it was something binding in the bellhousing. I took off the clutch slave cylinder, and found that the release arm was flopping about completely loose. I guess when I was putting the tranny and engine together, the throwout bearing must have slipped off the release fork or something... Sigh, I really don't want to split the motor and tranny again. It was a real PITA getting them back together last time.... I don't suppose there's any way to fix this without splitting them is there?

Just how much is the arm moving? Mine had about 3/4 of an inch free play, with the slave removed, and it worked fine.

It looks like I can move the arm all the way from the fly wheel to the bellhousing (full travel) without any resistance.

If you have the clutch disk properly centered ( which it is now since you got the transaxle on there the first time) it should not be a big deal to split the transaxle and engine to check the clutch fork. I'd expect this is a 30 minute job.

From my experience if there is difficulty getting the engine and transaxle together it is:

1) clutch disk is not centered

2) need to rotate crackshaft or transmission shaft a little to get splines to line up.

Well, I guess I don't have much of a choice. Btw, just out of curiosity, what did you do for the clutch setup? did you just use the stock quad 4 slave hooked to the fiero master?