Hello to all that make up the great collective wisdom. I am having a problem
with the transmission in the old TR6. The body and frame went to the body
shop the other day and I was feeling a bit empty inside (not having the old
dear in the garage after four solid years was harder than I anticipated) so
I decided that I would finally get around to cleaning up the gearbox. It was
rather obvious that someone had been in there recently (blue permatex, new
shift forks, apparently new synchronizers, etc.) and I know that the trans
had all the gears with no terribly unusual noises. One thing that the
gearbox did do was the gearshift tended to rattle in third gear under
acceleration. I checked for the little ball in the shift lever which it had
which I then promptly lost in a stone driveway. It didn't seem to make much
of a difference either way. Enough background information, now onto the
problem. I took the top cover off and removed the drain and fill plugs and
took the box to work to put in the parts washer to clean her up. After
cleaning as best as I could I proceeded to reseal and regasket the trans.
When I got it all back together the trans would "lock" up in all forward
gears. It would unlock itself if I rotated the input shaft counter clockwise
about 1/4 turn. Strange I said It wasn't like this before and I know that I
did not disturb any of the gear stacks or shafts and I also know that it
wasn't engaging two gears at once. I should note here that during the clean
up I did notice a lot of metal shavings in the box (both brass and steel).
So I figured that something was coming apart in there in a big way and my
theory was that the metal shavings were "holding it all together". Okay
everybody are you still with me? Heres were it gets weird. I proceed to
disassemble the box (thanks to Bob Lang for his very helpful article in the
VTR pages). I figure I'm going to find something obvious (wiped out counter
shaft broken second gear bushing, something). Well as far as I can see there
is no obvious reason for this. Is it possible that maybe I cleaned out all
the lubrication and caused it to lock up? A couple of things that I did
notice, the input shaft to mainshaft seems kind of loose but the needle
bearing looks okay. the second and third mainshaft gears seem kind of loose
on their respective bushings, once again no obvious signs of wear. The
bushings do fit very nicely on the mainshaft however. This is my first
British Gearbox so I really don't know what is normal. the gearbox number is
CC99958. As far as I can tell from the catalogues that I have it would be a
1973 and later box with steel bushings. My box has all brass bushings. I
have not had time to take any measurements yet but I thought maybe I'm
overlooking something. Well if you've made it all the way through this very
winded posting I thank and congratulate you. If you want to mail me directly
I'm at MMBENT@MSN.COM Once again thanks, Craig Bentley
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