Got a fair bit done today and tomorrow I may be able to get the lump back in the car.

I took off the front cover of the gearbox and replaced the seal. The old one wasn't leaking and it looked ok but I had the new one anyway so...
Was very careful to make sure I had it sealed well. Plenty of gasket goop.

Then after a few pics of the innards I cleaned up the side plate and with a new gasket and plenty of goop sealed it up as well.


3.6 Litres of engine oil and I was ready to attempt a test of the OD hydraulics. Using my corded hand drill and after scouring to find some suitable hose clamps and a piece of hose, we eventually came up with this:


It's a bit (OK a lot) rough but it functioned. Spinning the box in 4th and tweeking the lever by hand we were able to establish reasonably confidently that the hydraulics and the mechanism of the OD function. An audible and visual change in the speed of the output shaft was quite evident.


The solenoid is new so as long as it functions and I set it up correctly, I feel sure I will be able to get this to function.

After a bit of drama I eventually removed the old spigot bearing. Tried the grease in the hole and a close fitting plunger and driving it out to no avail. Then used a length of 10mm threaded rod with a large nut on the end fed through and hooked over end of the bearing and pulled it out using a heavy length of steel with a hole in it as a slide hammer up against another nut on the other end. Took a while but it came out relatively easily. Cleaned everything out and using the old spigot drove the new one in flush with the front end of the hole. No photos of this procedure unfortunately.

After putting the new spigot bearing in and attaching the clutch using the spare 1st motion shaft as an alignment tool an old guy and a scrawny lad couldn't for the life of us get the two together.


So a different approach was required.


Dropped straight in - no fuss!

And so this is where we are up to tonight.


Stay tuned for tomorrows episode.

Today I polished the ball and the pivot of the lever. Used a piece of abrasive foam to make sure there were no rough patches and then buffed it on a cloth wheel in the drill press. This is to make sure the action is as smooth as possible.


I then attached the remote control unit and assembled the lever in the remote control unit with a smear of vaso' around the pivot.


Went through all the gears checking the two switches with a multimeter to make sure they function correctly. I ended up swapping the reverse switch out of the other box as the on in the OD box was rusted on. I probably won't be using it anyway - MK1 no reversing lights - but I may want to put a small 3rd party reversing light later on so it's good to have it functioning. The new wiring harness I put in a few years ago has the wires for the reversing light so it's definitely something I may be inclined to do later.

Tomorrow I'll change the front oil seal and finish the side inspection plate installation, fill with oil and see if I can test the OD function.
I've also got the new solenoid ready to go and I found this Moss video which gives me some good information on the electrical side of the solenoid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI6EhAT9WSc

Chris

There's 20 photos explaining this so this entry is a looong one. Sit back and enjoy the ride.
I'd mentally done this a few times in my mind and it was dependent on a few things going my way.
Here's what I'm dealing with:


The bottom of the lever is about 8mm too long. Everything else seems ok and Peter had been there before so I was confident that the principal was sound.

With the nylon bush in the right place the top is this far out.


With the top in the right place the bush is too far down.


About 45mm overall needs to be 36mm, about.


This bit needs to be about 36mm in total.


Here we are set up ready to cut. Too hard to use a hacksaw - have to use an angle grinder. This is a leap of faith!


Well there's no turning back now. I was disappointed in my apparent inability to cut freehand more accurately than this.


For my plan to work I needed to be able to drill into the ends. I wanted to drill through the centre of the shaft before I cut it but it was far too hard. I was hoping that it was only case hardened.
Yes it is only case hardened. That's a blurry centre punch indent. The end of the shaft before cutting simply flattened this same punch.


Small end cleaned up and bevelled holding it in the drill press and using the angle grinder whilst turning at a moderate speed. Can't do this with the other part so me next cut has to be better.


After some careful measuring this is how much had to come off - cut has to be straighter than the previous cut!


I was able to do a straighter cut and cleaned it up on my linisher, and put a bevel on it as well. A 3mm hole is drilled in both ends.


Small end drilled. These were an easy drill the metal being quite soft inside.
The end having a flat on it made it easier to mount. The drill holes were only about 3mm deep, suitable for a rod of about 5mm long being used as a spigot.


Here we have the rod in place in the big end:


The assembled end before welding. The spigot was not in the exact centre but as they were both 'wrong' turning one around found the position where the errors cancelled each other out.


Setup for welding was a bit tricky and I could only align by eye.


Welded together. I made 2 welds opposite each other then one each side ground out to get full penetration then welded the sides. That means there were 4 welds around the join.


The fact it was case hardened has another advantage with the welding. It means that the bulk of the metal stays basically the same composition and any heating and/or cooling should have minimal impact on the strength of the component. Any heat treatment would only effect the surface and it's only the surface of the end ball that may be effected and it's enclosed in the nylon bush anyway.

Grinding down the weld was tricky but it doesn't have to be perfect. I did this by hand off hand grinding on a 9" bench grinder and touched up with a strip of emery cloth. (Old linisher belts come in handy for this sort of thing)


Well that's it. Here's in position from the top.


and here's a blurry shot in position from the bottom.


Preliminary movements seem good. I'll assemble it completely and try it's movement out more fully tomorrow.

On another topic. I also assembled the OD unit onto the gearbox this morning and it went very smoothly.
Some pictures of that are below as well:


Making sure the splines are lined up way down here and the thing just fell together.


It was a good day!

Been a couple of days since last entry.

Phone call to Heritage, new solenoid $80 including delivery - ouch! But wait, here's the kicker. The little cover/plug at the end of the solenoid, number 36 here:


$50 odd WOW! Needless to saw I'm just getting the solenoid. Should be here before the weekend.

Went back and started attacking the OD unit and pulled it down as far as I dare. I really just wanted to confirm that the clutch material on the inner and outer cone clutch was serviceable and there was nothing obviously amiss inside.
Here's a series of photos of what I found:

Inside forward case - bush looks ok.


Inside rear case - Shows the outer gear and the roller clutches. Decided not to go down further.


Cone clutch - Shows the thickness of clutch material - worn but serviceable IMO


Planetary gear set - The other side of this showed some sign of previous work done. Also shows the annular clutch ring in good condition.


Innards overview - Some evidence of some sludge but seems ok.


Well all seems OK. I took some time to clean it out as best I could and started to put it back together. All going swimmingly and after cleaning it all up and putting it all back together I glanced across at the manual insert that I'd been referring to when I pulled it down and this picture attracted my attention:



It mentions the importance of aligning the planetary gears in the carrier before assembly.
DAMN! I didn't do that - so it was back in again to fix that. When I was splitting the case again one of the studs backed out of the case rather than the nut come off. On closer examination the studs thread was galled and jammed the nut. Here's a pic:



When I checked the others there were 2 more that showed signs of damage. I replaced the one pictured with a long threaded bolt with the head cut off and used some loctite on the lower end. The others I was able to clean them up sufficiently with a die nut before putting it back together again.

That was yesterday.
This morning I went and tried to find an alternative to the 'solid gold' end plug and found this at Pirtek:



$5 and I'm happy.

This unit is pretty exposed on a gearbox that has obviously been kicking around someone's workshop for the past 20 odd years. The cover over the end was split and the wire coming off had seen better days.
I had visions of the end being taken off and the solenoid being cleaned up and all being well.

Closer examination. however, revealed this:


What a mess!


I'm not even going to bother attempting a connection to it to see if it functions. The state of the points on the unit tell me that it needs replacing.
I'll ring Heritage tomorrow and see how much a new one is. I also need the cap over the end. It appears to screw in to cover the actuating end of the solenoid.

Well after a day and a half I've given up on this little bugger.
Will not budge and I fear that any further attempts will damage something.
This is what I was dealing with, down in a recess with just 2 small flats to grip and it is supposed to unscrew. Can't get anything substantial down there, it just laughed at needle nosed pliers:

It measured 7/16" across the flats so I sacrificed an 11mm socket and made this:

Alas, It simply screwed itself off and after several tries with a little refining inbetween I gave up on that and asked for help from the forum.
Link to forum post
The discussion is still going but I didn't get much joy there. Suppose that not too many had dissembled an early OD. I did get a suggestion which I had thought of and that was to press a piece of tube over the socket to give it more support.
Today I did that and here's a picture of the reinforced socket in the hole ready to try.

But a similar result and the socket simply screwed itself out again.

It just doesn't want to unscrew. I toyed with the idea of having one more go machining a much more closely fitting tool all around the part and here is the start of that.

But to be honest I've simply lost motivation with that and have finally decided to 'let sleeping dogs lie'
The pump can remain in there as it is and I will simply flush it out as much as possible. I don't want to run the risk of damaging it. I did get the whole thing to move slightly but that was with more force than I felt comfortable putting on the part.
So we move on!