Gearbox cleaning

Pretty much the final thing to do before the gearbox goes off to be reconditioned was to clean it up.

Having borrowed a pressure washer (thanks Malc) I set to with my trusted Marine Clean in the air powered sprayer.

The before pic...


With a fair bit of work the grime was removed and the box came up well.

I then refitted the shift mechanism as I have decided to leave the painting of the bracket until after the box has been rebuilt.

So that's as far as we go for the moment.

Hope to get the box off to gearboxman (see www.gearboxman.co.uk)within the next month.

Update: of course what I didnt realise is that the gearbox will be totally stripped and cleaned inside and out as part of the rebuild! Ah well al least it gave me something to do!

What I do need to do is confirm that POR15 metalready will not effect the sealant used to stick the cases back together. I need to do this as I want to use POR15 to paint the box when it comes back from being rebuilt. So I need to conduct a trial on the box as its stands and on some automotive sealant to see if it is effected by the sealant.

Shift Mechanism removal.

One thing I can do to the box before its rebuilt is rebuild the shift mechanism. Its removal will also help with cleaning the box once the snow has melted outside!

So this is the offending piece.

First step was remove the bolt holding the lever to the actual selector rod.


At this point I made sure to take a picture to remind me where the special washer and insert went!

Next it was a case of undo all the bolts holding the bracket in place and remove the shift mechanism in one go. In the picture below I have replaced the bolts which double up in holding the gearbox together!

With the mechanism removed I figured out how to remove the spring retainer clip, tricky as it had no little lugs to use the normal c clip removal tool.

But it came out in the end, allowing removal of the shift lever assy.

With the assy removed the lower plastic cup could be inspected and later removed, I had hoped to replace these but as cant find part numbers for them I guess Ill just clean these up and reuse.


So thats all the bits laid out.

Assy housing CS lever, lower cup, spring coil, spring retainer, spring ring and Assy change speed lever with upper cup attached. (to quote correct Jag terms (apart from the cups!)

Next step will be to get the Nitro mors out again on the housing and paint it up, red VHT again!

Finally I looked closer at the lever to determine where I can cut it to mount an adapter block to allow me to mimic the Tremec mounting options and give me flexibility once the box is in the car.

I'm not going to be able to tell where the shifter will appear in the driving position until the box is in and the body is on, therefore with a more universal style fitting I can do what I need later on without having to remove the body to adjust the lever. So I've decided to get it modified now, possible even before the box goes fro rebuild. I may need to copy Simons copper pipe lever if that's the case!

Slip yoke.

With the main gearbox rebuild still to be finalised I had some garage time available to me, so one of the jobs that I needed to do was to separate the slip yoke from the prop shaft.

The slip yoke is attached to the prop by a standard hardy spicer universal joint.

This is removed in the same manner as the rear driveshaft joints except this time round I have a press to make things easier, end result 5 minutes work and the slip yoke was free.

Next was to make it look a bit better, so a quick soak in my favourite "Marine Clean" to degrease followed by a healthy coating of nitro mors to remove the paint. A bit of work with some fine paper to remove the surface rust and the part is now ready to take a fresh coat of paint.

I'm not sure but I think its going to be VHT red engine enamel 1) to match the engine and 2) I've still got some left so I don't have to buy anything!!