Little by little:

I'm being held back by a few problems now. The bolt which retains the crank pulley to the crankshaft is quite seized, I can't decide what to do about it. I restrained the crankshaft and pulley assembly and it DID NOT move, but neither did the bolt. I stopped out of fear of damaging the engine-bellhousing junction where the engine stand is connected. Also the starter bolts (which have an allen key head) are held in tight and i can't remove one of them. The assembly is held by two bolts, one of which came off with some effort, but the other one is just "spiralled", the allen equivalent of "rounding". The allen wrench just slides out under turning. The head of the bolt is too smooth and round to grip with a pliers or vise grip. It might even take the hacksaw to solve this but I haven't given up yet.