With a view to starting the engine before I did anything else to it, started to look at the starter motor.
Stripped it down into its constituant parts, which for the most part is pretty simple.
Un-screw the two long scripts from he back, gently remove the rear casing, remembering where the brushes go.
And then remove the gear from the front of the starter. The bit that engages with the flywheel when the starter motor is run.
Now that is a little easier said than done. Its all held together by a small spring clip, but to get this off the big thick spring needs to be compressed.
You can, apparently get tools to do this, but I dont have one, and didn’t want to buy one.
So came up with this.
Two bits of old leaf spring, one with a cut-out, and two long sockets between them. Then, using my borrowed press, slowly compress the spring.
Now, I have to confess, I made yet another school boy error here. While cutting the leaf springs with an angle grinder, lost concentration for a moment.
My first thought was, my leg feels a tad warm! looking down I had only gone and set my trousers and jumper on fire!!! Quickly dowsed the (albeit small) fire on my leg, and all good, well nearly, ended up with a burn that was still sore a week later.
I have called this introduction, for one very important reason. I completely changed my plans for the engine, as it turns out for the good.
First of all, what have I got here, well, its a 2.25 litre Petrol, 3 main bearing engine, and while there is no guarantee, looking at the serial number looks like the same engine it came out of the factory with, some 59 years ago.
My plan was to get the engine running before even considering what needed to be done. First thing I wanted to do was to do a simple compression test, so bought a fairly cheap compression tester.
While waiting for that to arrive, I thought, lets see if it turns over on the starter motor (which I had recently re-furbished, read about that here). So connected up the battery, with the starter push button, using my new cables I bought when I bought a new wiring loom and lets see what happens.
Well, it worked, engine turned over.
BUT! after I got the compression tester, charged up the battery tried again, and….. the engine wont turn over, its locked up! SHIT! what have I done?
What I was also hoping for was to see oil on the rockers.
So, change of plan, not going to try to start it, decided I will do a complete re-build on the engine. This is going to have a massive impact on my budget and timeline. But given Isobel is highly un-likely to be on the road this year, as I had planned / hoped for, the time will not be too much of an issue, and given the amount of time and money I have spent so far, feels like it would be skimping on something so important.
So, off we go, first thing is to strip the engine down.
Been waiting a while to write up this part, mostly because I was waiting on a few parts. But here we are, finishing off the gearbox. Last time, I completed the re-build of the main gearbox and prior to that, re-assembled the front output housing and transfer box. Now its time to put them all together, and add on the handbrake mechanism and clutch assembly.
First up, connect the gearbox to the transfer case. Not much to see here, covered most of it before.
This picture is just after they were put together, and to do this had to lock up the gearbox by selecting 2 gears at the same time so I could torque up the front and rear nuts.
Oh, forgot to mention, the reason it has taken a while to get to this point, I was waiting on some new parts, one of them was the front housing seal, which I had put in the wrong way round.
Clutch slave and assembly
This is the support for the clutch slave cylinder.
It connect to the clutch assembly in the bell housing.
Now, i’m always honest about my mistakes, and there is an obvious one in this image!
Can you see my school boy error?
Here’s a clue to the mistake. The arm (towards the top) connects to the slave cylinder, which is shown above. When the slave cylinder is activated, it rotates the bar on the brass ball thats held in-place by the two plates which in turn, engages the clutch.
I will help you out a little, I put the arm and assembly through from the wrong side of the bracket! see, school boy error.
Handbrake assembly
This was a little more challenging than the clutch, even with the mistake. One of the big difference’s is that the handbrake is just mechanical, not hydraulic.
This is the finished assembly.
Basically, the two brake shoes are held in-place at the top and bottom, with two springs.
The bottom bit, is simply a brake adjuster,
The top one, is the part that is activated when you pull up the handbrake, pushing the shoes apart onto the brake drum
So lets look at some of these in more detail.
All the bits diss-ambled, with the new shoes, that were one of the first things I bought for Isobel, they were on offer!
This is the part that pushes the brake shoes apart when the brake lever is pulled on.
This is the adjuster. I renewed the 2 rollers and the adjuster.
Basically, screwing the threaded part in, pushes the sides out, hence adjusting the brake shoes.
Not much else to say about these things, its all pretty simple other than what the completed gearbox looks like after these parts were added.
As with most things I do with Isobel, not totally done. I forgot to order the rubber boot for the clutch on the bell housing, and not finished painting the brake drum. Last but not least, while I can select all gears easily, low/high ranges and 2/4 wheel drive. But wont know for sure it all works properly until its attached to the engine, in the Land Rover and I try it for real.
In the last article, I stripped down and had a good look at the main gearbox, and was going to order some new parts. Well, I got the parts I needed and in this article I get to re-build a gearbox.
Before I get into the detail, cleaned up the really mucky cases, and gave them a coat of etch clear coat.
First up, the 3rd / 4th gear syncro. If you remember, one of the springs was missing, its a common issue apparently.
So ordered 3 new NOS springs (All the way from Cyprus! Not entirely sure why I did that, but I did).
Anyway, took the remaing 2 springs out, and fitted the new ones. The picture is just before I put the final one in.
I have heard from various video’s, stories of woe, putting these in, not sure why it was pretty simple.
Next is the 2nd / 3rd gear bush, if you read the previous post, you will know this was broken and in 2 parts. There is an alternative to the all in one, which is to buy it already broken (actually 2 separate parts). I also got some recommendations to use the 2 part option, but, I know best, :-), so bought an OEM 1 piece part, have to say, f’ing expensive. This is the first place where there are certain parameters to meet.
2nd Gear end float3rd gear end floatBush end float
Second gear end float, between 0.004 and 0.007in is needed. It can be adjusted, but in my case didn’t need to be as it was tight on 0.006.
3rd gear end float is the same as 2nd gear, but this time the 3rd gear is inserted onto the bush.
Again, didn’t need adjusting as it came out with 0.004
The final one is the bush end float. This needs to be 0.001 to 0.008in.
I did need to adjust this, well actually if I had read the green book, I wouldn’t have had to, by rubbing down the bush.
Ended up with 0.005in
With the bush end float, a spring clip needs to be in-place. These are really difficult to get on and off. To the rescue comes the Series 2 club again. It was recommended to buy 2 clips, that are exactly the same and cut one in half, making it much easier to put on and off while setting the distance, by rubbing down the bush.
You can see above the half’s of the spring, and perhaps the reason why they are so challenging to get on and off. When everything is good, time to put the 2nd gear and 3rd gear on with the spacer washer and the complete spring clip.
Had me stumped for quite some time, until I came up with this little method, which worked surprisingly well.
Basically used split pins tie-wrapped onto the shaft, that allowed the spring clip to be tapped on over the split pins and down the shaft until home, safe and sound.
Moving on, the next job was to sort out the rear main shaft bearing and bearing housing. Now, I read my little green book and it suggested that the housing needed to be Loctite’ d on, but was contradictory to other parts of the book. Also, a couple of videos I watched, 1 used Loctite, another didn’t. So I took the housing out and ordered some Loctite, and then thought, let me ask the series 2 club again. I had one answer saying Loctite the bearing in, but not the housing, another saying not too. The chap that said not to, I bought my replacement front axle case off, and remember he said “Gearbox’s were his thing” and always gives answers to peoples questions on the forum, so went with that. that did mean of course, I had to put it all back in.
Inside the housing, a circlip needs to be inserted to hold the bearing in-place. When I took the whole housing out, I realised (and the green book says) its much easier to do out of the case, than when its still in the case.
Ignore the gear and the oil thrower and you can just see the circlip on the housing, that holds the housing in the right place.
Out of intertest, this circlip is huge, and pushed my little circlip plyers to their limits.
Finally, the main shaft was pressed into the bearing. Again, recommendation was to press it in, rather than brute force, so my borrowed press came in useful yet again.
Probably worth a look at the main shaft at this point, so here it is, with all the gears, syncro and oil thrower in-place.
Actually, before I pressed the main shaft in, I put the reverse gear mechanism and gears in. This required a little more brute force than I would have liked, as the shaft, needs pressing in from the back of the case, and it was tight.
A little bit of heat, and a large hammer got it home without any collateral damage.
Now the main shaft is in, as is the reverse gear, time to add the lay-shaft. I got it in, after figuring out how too, and tried the bell housing on (Pics of that further down) As with all things, had me stumped for a while. The bell housing would not sit properly, turns out I had put a little roller bearing, that is in the back of the box in the wrong way around!
The Lay-shaft sites in a roller bearing at the bottom, and with a little fiddling, moving gears around, finally got it in.
The Layshaft is the shaft at the top in this picture.
The last part is to put the bell housing on. Again, watched endless hours of videos of people doing this, and almost without exception, everyone said this is really tricky. Why?
Well, this is the back of the bell housing, already added the gear on the left (Primary pinion), which the main shaft needs to be located in, and the gear on the right (Constant gear) with a spacer underneath needs to go over the lay shaft. But as you can see, its not attached, and needs to sit behind the primary pinion gear.
For context, these are the two shafts the above needs to be located on. (top being the lay shaft, bottom being the main shaft).
Anyway, the little green book (500 ish pages) says to locate the gears as I have them above, and holding them in position with fingers through the bearing, position the bell housing onto the gearbox main case.
I have to say, with a tiny amount of jiggling around, it all went pretty smoothly. So, the moral of the story, dont believe everything you read or listen to on the Internet, use your brain, think and importantly “RTFM”.
So here it is, the main casing with the Bell-housing attached and all the gears, hopefully in the right place.
The selector forks need to be inserted, in a specific order. (3rd/4th, 1st/2nd and finally reverse).
Its at this point, I got excited about progress, and forgot to take more pictures, so here’s what they looked like before I cleaned them all up.
From the left, reverse gear selector, 1st/2nd gear selector and finally 3rd/4th selector.
Again, dont believe everything you hear on the Internet, everyone says how tricky it is to get them back in and make sure they are located properly. A little more jiggling, and they were all good.
With the selectors in, I can make sure it all works.
So here it is, selecting gears and “seemingly” working.
I should have stopped at this point, because I need to tighten up the shaft bolts, and that requires the gearbox to be locked up, typically by selecting 2 gears at the same time. You cant do this, for obvious reasons normally, and this is achieved with the next parts I put on. But put them on anyway.
Put the top case on over the selector shafts, and added a series of ball bearings held in with springs.
These stop 2 gears being selected at the same time, by locating in the little grooves on the selector shafts.
One of them is fitted (image to the left) and one ready to be fitted (less a small rubber seal).
There is two oval balls that sit between the shafts, two round ones that are in the sides of case and there should be one in the top, but I couldn’t find the ball bearing to go in there. Nearly bought one for £0.74 + £5.95 shipping, but checked the part number, and its the same as the ball bearings in the steering box, which I replaced, so somewhere in the workshop, I have the old bearings. I haven’t thrown anything I have replaced out yet, so they are there somewhere.
Thats it for now, few things to finish up, add the clutch housing, find that ball bearing and tighten up the shaft nuts, and lastly, put the transfer case (done previously) and this part together to complete the gearbox.
So, until next time, hopefully next weekend, bye for now.
After stripping and re-building the Transfer Box and Front Output Housing with all the bits and bobs in those, I started to strip down the main part of the gearbox. I have to say with some trepidation, as I have never done this before, and whenever I mentioned to people I was going to do it myself, there were always plenty of, “are you sure, its not easy, gearboxes are very complicated”.
Well as it turns out, its not that difficult after all, well the strip down anyway, the re-build might be a bit more challenging as there are a few tolerances to be aware of and make sure are set correctly.
the real purpose of stripping it down, similarly to the Transfer and Front Output housing was simply to check it all out, replace any parts that had obviously worn out, change seals, gaskets etc. so nothing major.
This is the part I’m interested in, the other parts are the transfer box and front output housing.
First thing (actually I had already done this, before I did the Transfer and Output housing) is to remove the Selector rods. From top to bottom, we have the Reverse Selector, 1st and 2nd gear selector and finally the 3rd and 4th selector rods.
They are a bit awkward to get out, but a bit of jiggling and out they come.
I didn’t take many pictures of the actual strip down, sorry for that.
Other than a couple of plates on the back of the box, this is the first bit to come off, its a castle nut, that should tightened to about 85ft lb. Trouble is, I couldn’t find a socket to fit (no idea what size it is), so resorted to a screwdriver through the case hole (on the left) and knocked it loose with tool No# 1. (Hammer)
This releases the Bell housing from the main gearbox case, but also allows the Layshaft to come out, and some of the gears off the main shaft, leaving behind the main shaft and the reverse gear.
This is the top of the main shaft, which needs to be knocked out, with, I have to say took some force, but it did come out.
There is also a rather large circlip holding the bearing housing in-place, which caused me no end of frustration… I’ve only got relatively small circlip plyers, and this was a bit of a struggle.
Also took out the seal, and the bearing sat underneath it.
The next challenge was taking off the 2nd and 3rd gear off the main shaft.
You can just about see a split washer holding the gear in position on the main shaft.
I dont have a tool to remove these, but thanks to one of the many videos online, learnt a little trick, which is to lever the washer apart, and slide in split pins to hold it. Then gently, it can be slid up the shaft, releasing the gears, and importantly a bronze bush.
It was this bronze bush I really wanted to see, as they are apparently susceptible to breaking.
Finally, had to punch out the reverse gear and shaft, which needed the casing to be warmed up and the shaft driven out. (sorry, no pics of that at all).
So what am I left with, well, a nice collection of gears, spacers, shims, bushes and shafts. So here goes, my attempt at an explanation of all the bits.
This is the main shaft, this is the shaft that holds all the driving gears, and its the moving of thsese around that selects the various gears (except reverse).
Front half of Main shaft (Primary Pinion and constant gear)
Rear half of main shaft
3rd / 4th gear synchromesh
3rd Gear
2nd Gear
1st Gear
Oil Thrower
Main shaft gear for transfer box
4th Gear, because it is selected by the Syncro, I “think” it is the gear on the primary pinion and constant gear, locking the main shaft and primary pinion together, to give drive.
The Layshaft sits along side the main shaft.
Layshaft
Roller bearing
Constant gear (layshaft)
3rd gear (Layshaft)
Layshaft sleeve
2nd gear (layshaft)
Roller bearing
bearing plate
Retaining plate
The part top right, that is not numbered is the reverse gear and shaft.
Starting to wish I’d never started to write this part up.
A much better explanation can be found here. Its a video that explains things much better.
The gearbox in that video is not the same as mine, its a later version which has Synchromesh between 1st/2nd and 3rd/4th. Mine, only has Synchro on 3rd and 4th. (Old school between 1st and 2nd, double the clutch when changing)
OK, so I have it all in bits, what next. Well, the first thing I did was post some pictures on the Series2Club forum, with the question…. Are these OK or scrap? I asked because I just dont know, as I have nothing to compare with.
The answers came flooding back, and happily, the consensus was that while I could replace a few bits, generally it all looks OK, so long as I’m not planning on doing the Dakar Rally any time soon.
That said, there are a couple of things to look at. 1. The Syncromesh has three. well should have 3 springs that keeps the central part central as it moves between 3rd and 4th gear. One was missing, quite common apparently.
The second issue was that the Bronze bush that is a common point of failure, had actually failed so that needs replacing also.
Final part, for completeness is the clutch housing and mechanism. Not taken this apart just yet, might leave as is, need to look and see if it could do with any new parts.
So thats the Gearbox stripped down, all I need to do now is to clean it all up, casings, gears, shafts etc. order some new parts, and put them all back together. Thats where I need to take my time, make sure all the tolerances are set accurately. Had some really good advice on this also from the Series2Club forum.
I did consider replaces one of the gears that is showing a little more wear than the others, and the bearings, but the consensus was that what I have will likely be perfectly ok, and I wont really know for sure until the gearbox is being used. So it will go back together with what I have and see how it performs when I get the drive Isobel for the first time! If its not right, we’ll it will simply have to come back out and re-built again, but this time knowing what to focus on and what actually does need replacing, if anything.
The last time I was stripping down the gearbox, more specifically the Transfer Case and Front Output Shaft housing. I was faced with a snapped bolt that is supposed to hold the 4WD lever.
I mentioned what I would try, which was to try a bolt extractor, which I did, and which didn’t work, it made no impact on the bolt all.
Next option was to drill the old bolt out and re-tap it. By this time I had the new bolt which just happened to have 1/4″ Whitworth thread. Oh crap, another new tool needed.
Anyway, the upshot is, that by carefully drilling out the old, and re-tapping the hole until the new bolt went all the way home, It is now sorted.
Before starting to put things together, bit of evening work to clean up some parts and get them painted.
Onto the re-assembly. the first thing to address is the Speedo housing.
The Speedo housing is pretty simple, cleaned it all up, fitted a new ‘O’ and put it all together.
The speedo housing needs to be fitted to the Transfer case before anything else, as this sets the pre-load on the Output shaft. To set this, according to the green bible you put the speedo housing on, without any shims (see pics below) and gently tighten, until the pre-load is set to between 2 and 4 ft lb
These two pictures show the shims that sit between the speedo housing and the transfer case, and the method for measuring the pre-load. (I thought I had taken a picture of this, but seems I didn’t).
On the left, these are the shims.
Because I didn’t change any bearings, I assumed it would be good with the same number of shims. Not the case, had almost no resistance.
Adjusted the shims by removing one, which gave me the correct readings.
The method (from the green bible). Basically you wrap a cord around the Low/High selector wheel and pull it with a fish scale.
On this, the green bible says to wrap the cord around the selector, however when I watched various videos on how to do this, they wrapped the cord around the smaller gear. I ended up with just over 2lb ft around the selector, and just below 4 lb ft on the small gear, so as far as I can tell, all good.
I then, although I didn’t need to, put the intermediate gear back in. There is also a measurement to be taken here also.
I probably should have remembered to put the Low/High selector in before I did this, so had to take it back out to get the selector in.
This is the selector in the right place, ready for the selector shafts to be inserted.
Next up is to position the 3 shafts into the output housing, being careful to ensure that the coupling is positioned correctly. Also remembering to put the 4wd locking dog in.
This is the coupling and shafts.
Once they are in, its simply a case of offering the whole thing upto the transfer case, and bolting it all up. Well, easier said than done. Firstly, there is a big spring in there keeping the two parts apart, secondly we need to put the Front Output shaft in, and locate it into the 4WD locking dog, as well as putting a gasket between the two cases and not breaking it and finally locating the selector shaft through the selector.
Did a dry run first, before adding the gasket, also to make sure that it all seemed to work before committing.
Once it was all in, bolted it up and tested the selector shafts again. I’m pretty sure they are all working as they should, selecting low/high range and the 4WD selector kicking in when it should.
Fitted the rear output flange, and handbrake back plate, and finished off the front with the forward flange, the 4WD selector lever and the dust cover for the shafts. Also put the Low/High lever in position and tried on the new 4WD lever.
Put the bottom cover plate back on the transfer case, just to keep it safe and all together as this will need to come off later, and the intermediate gear out again when its attached to the main gearbox.
Everything tested ok, I guess I will only know if its completely right when it is put into use for the first time. The only thing I might change is to get a new 4WD pin, the old one is a little cruddy, and a little tight in the hole, no big deal, easy enough to change later, and not expensive.
So thats the Front output housing and transfer box pretty much sorted. What I should have mentioned was that I changed all the seals, just in case. Next job, onto the main gearbox.
After being distracted by other bits and pieces recently, finally got back to the Gearbox. As with all things, it all starts by stripping it down. The whole gearbox assembly is basically in 3 parts, Main Gearbox, Transfer Box, which houses the Low/High selector and transfers the Gearbox output to the Front Output Shaft Housing, , which contains the mechanism to select between 2 and 4 wheel drive.
First decision for me was whats the goal of doing this? I’m no Gearbox expert, in fact I have never stripped down, let alone re-built a gearbox before, Oh, apart from one on a RC car, not the same I think. All I want to achieve is firstly clean it all up, make sure all the gears and internal workings look in good condition and bearings have no excess play. The only parts I plan on replacing are the Gaskets and Seals, that is unless other issues become obvious. The other thing to do will be to check the various tolerances, end float, pre-load etc. Will cover that when I put it all back together.
First job is to separate the Main Gearbox from the Transfer Box. To do this, there are a number of bolts on the outside, but also 3 I think, inside the Transfer Box. To get to these, remove the bottom plate (after emptying the Oil), and remove the pin that holds the Intermediate gear in-place. (thats the gear in the picture on the left, in the middle of the box). The inside bolts can now be undone.
I jumped ahead a little in this write up, in fact I jumped ahead a little in the strip down. The Picture on the right, the rear of the Transfer Box, and shows the Handbrake mechanism. This all has to come off, and the bolt in the middle is tight and attached to a shaft that rotates. Afterwards I read that the best way to undo this is to lock up the gearbox by manually selecting 2 gears at the same time. I didn’t do this, I ended putting a bar on the other end wedged between the prop shaft bolts while I got this bolt loose. Not ideal, but it worked ok. No more pictures of this part, I was getting frustrated and irritated. Also behind the handbrake, is the speedo casing, no pictures of that either at this stage.
This is the other end of the Front Output Shaft Housing, and you can see the 4 shafts, one is the Low/High selector (top one with the bolt on) the two to the left of that are for the 2/4 wheel drive selector shafts.
The bottom one, is the front wheel drive shaft.
This was all separated from the transfer box, allowing all the inner workings to drop out, well nearly, a couple of other bits from the top of the transfer box had to be removed first (the bolt holding the selector fork and a plunger for transfer selector shaft, sorry, no pics of those either, will get some when they get put back together).
To get a better idea of whats inside this box, here is the inner workings from the parts catalogue.
Next job was to inspect all the gears that came out (not shown above) and bearings, which seem to all be pretty good, no play in the bearings, now obvious signs of wear on the gears or bearings. So set about cleaning up the cases and a creating a list of all the bits I will replace.
Before that however, I have one problem to sort out. When stripping down and recklessly removing bolts, without paying much attention, one of them snapped.
You can see it just under the drill bit, and the remains of the bolt towards the bottom of the picture.
This is a special bolt thats supports the 4WD selector leaver, so it has to be fixed.
I drilled a small pilot hole, and tried to wind in a bolt extractor to un-screw it. Didn’t have the right size drill, so will need to finish this when I get some new drill bits. Will drill a hole in the bolt remains, and with a bit of heat and an extractor try and wind it out. If that doesn’t work, will have to try and drill all the bolt out and re-tap the hole, but I think this is a whitworth bolt, so that will need the purchase of a whitworth Tap.
Onto the clean, this took a while, the cases were covered in caked on old solidified oil, grease and muck.
Wire brushes, soft brushes, de-greaser and elbow grease got them looking pretty good.
The part in the image is the Transfer Case and as you can clearly see I didn’t take it completely apart, didn’t feel the need, as mentioned before, bearings all felt really solid so no need to make work for something that will go back exactly as it came out.
Before the whole thing get put back together, I tried the shafts, just to make sure they were all ok, and more importantly, make sure I understand exactly where they need to go.
Its all pretty simple really, on the images above the middle on, you can just see the selector is off the splines, this allows the rear output shaft to turn without the font turning. In the last picture, you can see the shuttle has been pulled over the splines, hence locking the front output shaft to the rear, i.e. 4 WD. simples! The Low High, is actually in the transfer box part and cant be seen. Will get some pics of that when it goes back together.
All the parts, cleaned, sorted ready to go when I get my latest parts order, which consists of some special bolts, replacement ‘O’ rings and seals.
You can see the fork (Sitting on top) for the Low/High selector, which goes in that space in the hole underneath it, and bolts onto the low/high selector shaft.
The final part, is the Speedo housing and components, which also got a bit of a clean up and a list of bits needed.
The next step is to put it all back together, after fixing the broken bolt, checking tolerances, get a few covers and levers painted and after my parts orders arrive, hopefully during the week ready for the weekend. (Yes orders! couldn’t get all I wanted from one place, so had to bite the bullet on shipping charges, really annoying and not helping the budget at all).
Thats it for now, hopefully next update next weekend if all goes to plan, But! based on previous experience, that is highly unlikely, but no harm in trying.
Oh, one more thing thats been done, not by me, but a local firm is all of the body capping’s, windscreen frame, spare wheel bonnet support and lots and lots of other old galvanized parts have gone off for proper blasting and cleaning, ready to be dropped off at another company to be Hot Dipped Galvanized, more on that later.
If you have read the first couple of articles about when Isobel arrived, you might remember that when I took a look inside, to somewhat of a shock, I noticed that all three gear levers were missing. Since then, its been playing on my mind, mostly because to source a period correct main lever, people are asking lots of money. I saw one at a Land Rover spares day early on in my journey with Isobel, when I asked how much, had I been sat down, would have nearly fallen off my chair, £140 he was asking for.
As it happened, I didn’t buy that one, thankfully, but did buy one that was not 100% correct, the knob was a push on one as opposed to screw on and the ball at the end of the gearstick didn’t have the ‘O’ ring.
Just for reference, this is the drawing of the main gearlever from the parts book.
Also, the one I bought didn’t have the inner workings.
I have been keeping an eye out for all 3 levers ever since, as was not happy with the one I bought. Finally, and patience is a virtue, I found one being advertised on FB marketplace, and not only the main gearlever, they also had the Low/High lever, both at reasonable prices, so made them and offer for both, which they accepted, thats 2 out of 3.
Soon after, I saw a 4WD lever being advertised, again at a sensible price, so bought that one also. Fantastic, I now have all three gear levers, and all for less than the guy at the LR Spares Day was asking for. So I set about tidying them up. Not much else to say, other than here are the before and after pictures. they are all wrapped up and stored for later.
Now for those uneducated in Land rover Gears, as I am! here is a brief “very simple” explanation of why there are 3.
Main Gear Lever
Has a Black knob, and us used for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and Reverse gear selection
Low/High range
Has a Red Knob, ( don’t have one yet) and allows the gearbox to be switched between High and Low Ranges, in effect increasing the number of gears to, well, here’s the end of my knowledge, I assume to 10 gears. 5 in High Range, 5 in Low Range. Now I dont actually know if Low High also applies to reverse! Will find out later I guess.
4WD lever
Yellow knob, allows the drive to be put into 4 wheel drive. The normal position is rear wheel drive only, only when off road should 4 wheel drive be selected. Again, will learn more when I get to drive it.
Not a very exciting one this time, but necessary, nevertheless. I had high hopes for progress over the Christmas break, but didn’t actually get anywhere as much done as I had hoped, and didn’t even touch the bit I planned to work on, the Gearbox.
Anyway, did get some stuff done and one of those things was the Pedal assemblies. First, needed to disassemble the pedal boxes, all fairly straight forward but one bit had me stumped for a while until I managed to borrow a Hydraulic 12 Ton press.
This is the drawing from the parts book. the bits highlighted in red are what holds the pedal in the pedal box. There is a shaft (23) that sits inside two brass bushes (20). the shaft is held in-place with a pin (24) that locates through the shaft and the pedal box.
On my brake pedal assembly, the whole pedal was seized tight, and it was these parts that clearly had seized together and needed replacing.
Decided to do both pedals.
Managed to get an order in just after Christmas, after I realised I wouldn’t get to the Gearbox as planned, which, fortunately was delivered soon after.
The image on the left shows the pin (Holes) and on the right the shaft being pressed out, using sockets and upside down bolt to press it all the way out.
With everything in bits, as well as the accelerator parts, off to the blast cabinet, for nearly a day and half of sand blasting to clean it all up, ready for some paint.
I did spend some more time cleaning them up a little more and degreasing them before priming with Anti-Rust primer.
Clearly, making sure all the areas not to be painted were masked off first.
2 coats of primer, and 2 coats of Gloss black later. Oh, and all these parts hanging up around the house to keep them warm when they dried.
So onto assembly. To start with, the Accelerator assemblies. Now, I’m not putting these onto the Land Rover yet, will wait for the weather to be a little drier & warmer before I do that, but can lay them all out to make sure its all there. Also sorted out all the Nuts and Bolts I need when I do come to fit it all.
The Brake and Clutch pedals are pretty much the same, and again, will assemble them and then store them for when I do fit.
The brass bushes I mentioned earlier, according to the Official Land Rover Green Manual (I have just ordered one, to save me having to constantly read a pdf on my iPad) says they should be reamed to .750in. Now one of them , the bushes went onto the shaft and felt really nice, not tight, not too loose, and went ahead and re-assembled that pedal assembly. The other one, when it all went together, was too tight, so that one will need to be reamed, new tool (Adjustable reamer) ordered, so that will have to wait to be fully assembled until I have that and can get back down to the workshop.
I also noticed the some of the bolts that hold the pedal box to the bulkhead were not screwing in great, so spent some more cash and purchased a cheap UNF/UNC tap and die set. I’m sure that will come in useful later.
Little bit of a clean up of the threads sorted that, and they are all now perfect.
Thats it pretty much, not what I had planned, but all jobs that need doing and easier to achieve, even when you do have Man Flu for much of the time after Christmas.
Hoping you had a good Christmas and Happy New Year. Talking of New year, it was always hoped to get Isobel on the road before her 60th Birthday on the 1st November 2025. My feeling is that its going to be tight, as such am now thinking Summer of 2026 is probably more realistic, but, we will “keep on keeping on” a quote from a great Winston Churchill film “Darkest Hour” if I remember correctly.
The next part was going to be the Gearbox and Engine, and thats still true, I have started to strip down the Gearbox, and so far that looks pretty good. But have been side tracked onto keeping the wife sweet, and promised to do some decorating before Christmas, so the Gearbox will have to wait. But that doesn’t stop me working on some of the smaller jobs, like some of the electrical accessories. Namely the Windscreen Wiper motors (Lucas type), the Indicator stalk (Magna Tex) and the Headlight dip switch.
I will cover each of these off in separate sections, so lets start with the easy one, the Tex Magna indicator stalk. First off some pictures and the insides before I started work.
Tex Magna Indicator Switch
In the images above, left to right, the unit as it came off the Land Rover, not pretty, painted case, worn cables, rusty bracket. The next is the inside, showing the switch, and the remains of a bulb, which I have to say took me a while to figure out what it was! The last image shows the rubber surrounded wheel, which had started to disintegrate. This wheel runs on the outer case of the steering wheel, so when to centralise the steering, it rotates this wheel, turning off thee indicator. Simple but effective.
Before going too far, tested the switch, which worked, but worked even better after a spray with some switch cleaner.
First thing, get the case (shown is the headlight dip switch also) off to JC Vapour blasting for some gentle, but very effective cleaning.
What a fantastic job he did, they came back looking amazing.
Next, dig out the old rubber wheel, and replace with a new one. Apparently, the way to do this is to drill out the rivets (you can just about see them on the top), separate the two parts, put the new rubber in and use bolts, nuts or screws to re-attach them. I didn’t do that! I cut the rubber wheel, in line with each of the rivets, and gently eased the rubber into the gap. Worked perfectly, with no damage to the actual wheel.
Cleaned up the bracket and painted them a nice shiny gloss black, re-assembled and re-wrapped the cable with a cloth wrap. Not exactly the same as original, but pretty close.
Fitted a new bulb also. Job done, cant wait to get it back on the Land Rover, but for now, will be stored away nice and safe, and importantly somewhere I can remember where I put it.
Headlight Dip Switch
This switch was not really working very well, and wanted it cleaned up in any case so I set about, rather roughly taking it apart. Its much easier to know how to take something apart properly, after you have done it once, and broken it! The black bit, with the connectors on, I broke into many many small pieces.
With these 2 images, you can work out how it works, you press the button on the top, which rotates the star piece (Right image) which in turn rotates the two parts at the bottom of the top image, which switches between the three connectors on the black base. Sorry, really crap explanation!
Finally got it back together, although the vapour blasting did cause a slight issue (another lesson learned) it came back full of cleaning material, my mistake not Josh’ from JC vapour blasting. The damaged black connector base, I glued all the little bits back together with JB weld, sanded it and painted it. You will never know I broke it. So how should I have taken it apart, well there are two bits of metal tube to “rivet” the case and black base together, that are rolled over, I should have taken the top of these of before trying to force the black base out, hey ho, I know for next time 😉
Anyway, I got all the cleaning material out, fixed the base, cleaned all the contacts, sprayed it with a clear lacquer, so thats also ready to be fitted later.
Lucas Wiper Motors
Now this is the interesting part, my Land Rover has two, separate wiper motors, which if you look on eBay are being sold for stupid money, £200+ each.
So, lets get to it. The images below show what I had to work with. 1st issue, neither of them actually worked, and it soon became obvious why.. Seized up, rust and lots of almost solid grease. Fortunately, after taking them apart, I tested the motors and they both worked, so they are good, as such, they are both serviceable.
Looks a mess!Rotten and RustedGrime and dirtSolid greaseMore solid greaseNo wonder they didn’t work
So, here we have both of the motors, in their component parts, lots and lots of parts.
All were degreased, cleaned and inspected to see what needed to be replaced.
Spent some more money and ordered a service kit for all the bits that need replacing.
As with the Indicator stalk, the cases were vapour blasted, inside and out and they came out perfectly.
The internal wiring needed some attention, so renewed with new connectors and insulating block
Cleaned all the internal contacts, internal cases and added some lubricant to the brass bit in the middle (that supports the motor shaft).
Re-assembled the gearing after a good clean and some fresh grease.
And you can just see the front part of the casing, which I painted gloss black.
I applied a clear lacquer to the rear of the case, new gasket and new stainless steel components and seals for the front.
New connectors and there we have it, or them, two beautiful wiper motors, that in my opinion look amazing, and importantly as you can see below, 2 working Lucas FW2 Wiper motors.
So, thats three important items ready to go, but all will be stored until they can be fitted.
Now on the electrical side, something all of these things need, is to be connected up to the main wiring.
The wiring loom on the vehicle, was basically falling apart, and had lots of non-standard modifications.
So waiting in the wings, is a brand new Autosparks wiring loom, ready and waiting to get fitted.
Also, latest news, for my upcoming birthday, a new set of side, indicator and rear / brake lights are on order from Emberton Imperial.
Thanks Kim.. Exciting times to come, perhaps more for me than Kim.
That will pretty much be it now until the New Year, stuff will be done, namely the Gearbox, but not much else completed to write about.
Just a sneak preview to whats going on with the Gearbox.
Never, ever have I done anything like a gearbox before! Wish me luck.
SelectorsTransfer Box4WD / Low High Selectors
I have a decent break over Christmas, so assuming I dont drink and eat too much, much much more to come in the New year. Now this is important because the plan was to get Isobel on the road in 2025 for her 60th Birthday. Its going to be tight.
Until then, have a great Christmas and Happy New Year, and thank you for being patient with my sometimes long, miss-spelt, rambling posts.
