[crepemachine]

Pulled the gearbox out from underneath the car today. It had already been unbolted from everything when I pulled the motor out. Just had to jack the car up a bit for the bell housing to sneak out beneath the chassis. I opted for lowering the gearbox down with an engine crane through the floor. Bit tricky getting a good balance on it, but quite easy overall.

Won't be getting any parts for rebuilding it for a couple of weeks, but I'll pull it apart and clean it all up, see if there's any trouble. Not expecting to find any issues, the only problem it had was slipping out of first while idling down a hill. I've read that could be caused either by bad mounts or a missing cirlip, we'll see.

 

[crepemachine]

Finally had some more time to do a bit more on the gearbox. Made a bit of a mess pulling it apart.

The output bearing was challenging to get out. I had to modify the arms on my puller to fit inside the circlip groove. Didn't have the correct puller type to get it out properly. It worked, but did take a lot of force.

All out, ready to be pulled apart.

This bearing also took a lot of force to get off.

3rd

2nd

My puller couldn't reach the reverse gear so I pulled 1st gear then used a floor press to get the reverse gear off.

Here's everything laid out.

It all looks pretty good. Apart from 3rd gear having some chips taken out of a few teeth.

Looks to me like damage from a gear puller. The box had work done to it before I owned the vehicle, so I'd say that was the cause. Does anyone know where I can source the gears themselves? I've done a google but couldn't find anything. Or is this damage not bad enough to worry about?

 

[crepemachine]

8 months since last post. That's a bit sad, it's been too long since I've heard this thing running. My work load increased dramatically after covid, so it was hard to find time for anything else.

I didn't get any pics of the final assembly, but the gearbox is finished and back in the car. Used the crane through the floor to install it.

Interestingly, I found a ball bearing from the shifting components floating around... So I pulled all that apart and made sure everything was still there and installed correctly. After going through that process, I can't imagine how one of those ball bearings could escape without pulling it apart. Could it have been floating around in the box? Guess I'll never know, but I did have the issue of slipping out of 1st occasionally... Not sure if that could've been a cause.

Feels good cycling through the gears. The real test will come when it first drives again. Let's hope I followed the steps correctly...

Managed to get the engine installed. Here she is in all her glory!

So long as I can keep the beer fridge stocked, I should be able to make some steady progress over the next few months.

The snorkel mount had come loose, so that's why that's been taken off. I'll be sticking with the stock snorkel, but toying with the idea of fabricating an airbox. There won't be a second battery under the bonnet, so should have the room. Just depends if I can increase my skill with the TIG, which currently is quite low...

 

[geeyoutoo]

Lol, know your pain, many years ago when racing and building my own engines, every 3 meetings the engine would comedown for a rebuild. I was putting one together, I went through all the bits and pieces carefully and would assemble the engine, wind it over by hand many times using a tension wrench to check resistance, then pull it apart and check everything again, ie, pressure marks on mains and bigends, etc, etc.

So put it back together again and was cleaning up ready to install engine, picked up the 'empty' box of rings and heard a rattle, WTF, there was an oil ring spacer in the bottom of the box, WTF, WTF, no couldn't be I checked everything twice at least, but, I've never had an extra ring in dozens and dozens of engine rebuilds, bugga, bugga, how could this happen? nothing worse than a DNF in a racing series your trying to win. Pulled it apart and guess what??? there had been an extra spacer in the box, first and last time it ever happened. BTW it was worth it, at the end of the season I won the series .

 

[crepemachine]

Yeah, there's been a lot of double, triple checking. It's been a little while now since I finished assembling the motor, so fingers crossed it's all good. I'll definitely be taking it slow after the final fit up to get it started.

Learnt a lot in the process though, it's been great fun.

I've actually been short a bolt or two. My brother was rebuilding his motor in my shed at the same time and I'm fairly confident he has one or two Nissan bolts in his Toyota... At least he's got something to blame now if anything goes wrong.