Gearbox change

Friday night.... got home from work, got changed, and started to take the gearbox out of Charlie Camel. Earlier on in the year I had done an oil change oin the gearbox and half a baulk ring had come out of the drain hole. Although the box has continued to work satisfactorily, there has been a lingering thought in the back of my mind... When is it gonna go "BANG!!"? So I finally bit the bullet and bought a new box.

With the help of Mike, we managed to get the gearbox out of Charlie and lying down on the floor within a couple of hours... not bad going.

Saturday... Richard (another friend) can round to help. We started by separating the transfer box and bell housing from the main gearbox. Then took all the gearstick linkages off. While Richard treated the transfer box to some new gaskets, I changed the main oil seal on the back of the engine and then fitted the new clutch. It appeared that the clutch was probably done recently as ther ewas still loads of meat left on it.

Then we started to look at the gearbox. Not a huge amount of play in the mainshaft and all the splines were pretty good. I remember when we bought the Camel, the chap selling it said he thought it had had a replacemnt gearbox. This could well be the case, but it wasn't an Ashcroft one.

Anyway, having got the bellhousing off, we then started to clean it. This is when we noticed a huge crack in the thrust bearing carried... Nightmare! A quick call to Steve at Brookies confirmed that I had sold it one on Friday to a customer and that we didn't have any more on the shelf. Steve phoned Hunters who had one and put it by for us. Jen legged it over to Southampton to pick up the bits while me and Richard sat and ate donuts and drank tea :-)

By about 12, we had the gearbox back into Charlie. We had left the Transfer box off to make things more manageable, so with a rope round the box, jen lefting and me and Richard underneith we managed to guide the box into place quite easily.

Transfer box was refitted and the X-eng handbrake fitted in place of the drum handbrake which is rubbish. By mid afternoon everything was back in. By late afternoon, all the trim and floor panels were back in, and a successful test drive was made around the block.