I finally finished today and despite being very careful with the reassembly, it was with an air of trepidation that I fired the old girl up.
An easy start and it settled into a steady idle. Depress the clutch - no noises and it feels like it should. Engage first gear - no noises again, is this too good to be true? Release clutch and the car starts to move - it looks like success.
A short test drive and all is well. The clutch is just great and even though I ran on a trailing throttle a few times, it stayed in top gear.
I'll call that a result! All I have to do now is clean the greasy marks off the car and tidy up the garage.