Evening all! With RR threads keeping me sane in lockdown (thanks everyone) I thought I was probably massively overdue an update on my car.
Since the welding was completed and the fuel injection had been fitted the car had been doing well, still putting the miles in as a daily but with the odd trip further afield with zero issues.
The steering idler/damper had needed replacement, and that was done after a rover forum guy sent me one from Australia! The old one was knackered and had zero resistance.
Then i had a head gasket go on the drivers side bank. That was replaced in a few evenings (Its handy having two Rover v8's as it makes keeping gaskets on the shelf easier to justfy!)
Then the big one. The 4 speed had been making some omnious rumbling noises. As i was at the time in the middle of a chassis replacement on the Landrover I had to just nurse it as best as i could to make it last until that was done. Noise started off in 2nd gear only , but then gradually got worse as I guess swarf gradually got pumped around the box and eventually it was noisy in all gears.
Having known this was likley to be on the cards at some point I had planned ahead and bought a replacment gearbox off ebay- an LT77 from an SD1. All the guides said that swapping in a five speed was relatively easy and so it seemed like a good idea to upgrade. That, and the fact that parts for the four speed are apparently like poor quality wobbly children's play pony poo! I had bought the LT77 some years before and just plonked it in the garage, where i had then spent most of my time tripping over the thing.
I bought some parts:
and began reading up again on what to do. I had a new clutch kit, slave cylinder, automatic prop, gearbox bits and bobs and I thought I was ready so I booked a day off of work in July (2019) and got cracking.
I bought myself a level gauge thingamabob so that I could check the levels and alignment of the stock running gear components relative to each other before I took everything out, I stuck this everywhere I could think of around the underside of the car so that I could make sure I get the new gearbox and transmission aligned similarly:
Then i dragged the Lt77 I had purchased a few years ago out of the garage and drained it of its oil. The magnetic drain was a bit furry, but that wasn't a major concern as I have had a few LR boxes with a Christmas tree of filings that were fine. However there were a few chunks in the bowl - its never good when oil makes a "thunk, thunk, thunk" noise as metallic debris drops out... I decided to crack on at this point as I was feeling optimistic.
I propped the bonnet open as far as it would go, got out the engine crane and set to work:
So then I had a pretty filthy engine and box on the floor, and a big empty (and also filthy) space in the engine bay. A quick going over with some gunk and the hose sorted that out:
I then split the engine and box, and started cleaning up and painting the more scabby bits of the engine bay prior to putting everything back in:
A few nights later I got started on the LT77. I fitted the bellhousing and shifter mechanism, and adjusted the mech as per some information I found online, fitted a new speedo drive gear from TVR parts:
And here you can see bellhousing and shifter mech fitted, next to the old box.
Thats when things stopped going according to plan. I *thought* i had checked the box when i purchased it, but obviously didnt - or at least not properly. After setting up the shifter properly I had a horrible noise in reverse gear :
I couldnt bear to put the box in only to have to pull it out again, so i thought i should strip it and have a look. Problem with that was i didn't have a proper bench to do it on! Here comes a bit of scope creep....
Step 1 -Clear the Garage of all the old wibblepoo you don't need anymore. The whole place had become a total disaster through the endless nights working on the Defender chassis swap.
Step 2- Buy a load of timber:
Step 3 - Build a workbench:
Ask your very helpful neighbour to help you carry it into position :
Step 4 - Carry on where you were a few weeks ago and start finding out what was wrong with the box...
On opening it up, fifth gear looked good:
but getting into the main casing the reason for the noise soon became clear :
The reverse idler was completely destroyed, and had chewed up the layshaft gear slightly:
You could also see where the pump had been pumping swarf around, although the fibre gear didnt look too bad. The chunk in the palm of my hand was washed out of the oilway in the casing that the pump feeds :
I ordered a new idler gear from Rimmers, and it even came in a nice original BL box! :
I decided that with the amount of metal that had been floating around this thing it was best to strip and clean and check everything before ordering anymore stuff and reassembling, so i began doing just that:
And that whole process then took me (in amongst other things) the best part of a year to complete! More to follow....
Since the welding was completed and the fuel injection had been fitted the car had been doing well, still putting the miles in as a daily but with the odd trip further afield with zero issues.
The steering idler/damper had needed replacement, and that was done after a rover forum guy sent me one from Australia! The old one was knackered and had zero resistance.
Then i had a head gasket go on the drivers side bank. That was replaced in a few evenings (Its handy having two Rover v8's as it makes keeping gaskets on the shelf easier to justfy!)
Then the big one. The 4 speed had been making some omnious rumbling noises. As i was at the time in the middle of a chassis replacement on the Landrover I had to just nurse it as best as i could to make it last until that was done. Noise started off in 2nd gear only , but then gradually got worse as I guess swarf gradually got pumped around the box and eventually it was noisy in all gears.
Having known this was likley to be on the cards at some point I had planned ahead and bought a replacment gearbox off ebay- an LT77 from an SD1. All the guides said that swapping in a five speed was relatively easy and so it seemed like a good idea to upgrade. That, and the fact that parts for the four speed are apparently like poor quality wobbly children's play pony poo! I had bought the LT77 some years before and just plonked it in the garage, where i had then spent most of my time tripping over the thing.
I bought some parts:
and began reading up again on what to do. I had a new clutch kit, slave cylinder, automatic prop, gearbox bits and bobs and I thought I was ready so I booked a day off of work in July (2019) and got cracking.
I bought myself a level gauge thingamabob so that I could check the levels and alignment of the stock running gear components relative to each other before I took everything out, I stuck this everywhere I could think of around the underside of the car so that I could make sure I get the new gearbox and transmission aligned similarly:
Then i dragged the Lt77 I had purchased a few years ago out of the garage and drained it of its oil. The magnetic drain was a bit furry, but that wasn't a major concern as I have had a few LR boxes with a Christmas tree of filings that were fine. However there were a few chunks in the bowl - its never good when oil makes a "thunk, thunk, thunk" noise as metallic debris drops out... I decided to crack on at this point as I was feeling optimistic.
I propped the bonnet open as far as it would go, got out the engine crane and set to work:
So then I had a pretty filthy engine and box on the floor, and a big empty (and also filthy) space in the engine bay. A quick going over with some gunk and the hose sorted that out:
I then split the engine and box, and started cleaning up and painting the more scabby bits of the engine bay prior to putting everything back in:
A few nights later I got started on the LT77. I fitted the bellhousing and shifter mechanism, and adjusted the mech as per some information I found online, fitted a new speedo drive gear from TVR parts:
And here you can see bellhousing and shifter mech fitted, next to the old box.
Thats when things stopped going according to plan. I *thought* i had checked the box when i purchased it, but obviously didnt - or at least not properly. After setting up the shifter properly I had a horrible noise in reverse gear :
I couldnt bear to put the box in only to have to pull it out again, so i thought i should strip it and have a look. Problem with that was i didn't have a proper bench to do it on! Here comes a bit of scope creep....
Step 1 -Clear the Garage of all the old wibblepoo you don't need anymore. The whole place had become a total disaster through the endless nights working on the Defender chassis swap.
Step 2- Buy a load of timber:
Step 3 - Build a workbench:
Ask your very helpful neighbour to help you carry it into position :
Step 4 - Carry on where you were a few weeks ago and start finding out what was wrong with the box...
On opening it up, fifth gear looked good:
but getting into the main casing the reason for the noise soon became clear :
The reverse idler was completely destroyed, and had chewed up the layshaft gear slightly:
You could also see where the pump had been pumping swarf around, although the fibre gear didnt look too bad. The chunk in the palm of my hand was washed out of the oilway in the casing that the pump feeds :
I ordered a new idler gear from Rimmers, and it even came in a nice original BL box! :
I decided that with the amount of metal that had been floating around this thing it was best to strip and clean and check everything before ordering anymore stuff and reassembling, so i began doing just that:
And that whole process then took me (in amongst other things) the best part of a year to complete! More to follow....