are they needed? i see them for sale on SBD, and places like that, but are they really needed? i've seen 'special alloy' ones, but when the bellhousing's alloy anyway, is there a point?

or where can i buy gasket material to cut one out myself?

If you mean the one that goes between the gearbox and the bell housing , then yes they are needed. There are shafts that go through the front of the box, so you would have an oil leak if the gasket was omited. HTH Ray

there's seperate oil seals in the shafts as far as i can tell.



the shaft is a lot smaller than the hole in the middle, so i'm not sure that anything would be sealed by it. but would a squish of silicone sealer do the same job?

He's talking about the selector shaft which does not have an oil seal not the box input shaft. The selector shaft extends out the front of the box into a recess in the bellhousing at times depending on which gear is selected. Of course this is all relating the type 9 yes?

JC

ah yes type 9.
i see, that makes sense then. could it be sealed with some silicone then? it seems weird that SBD do an alloy gasket, well, its still metal to metal contact. what about if i was to get a suitable size fibre washer, or cut something out with some gasket material from and old intake gasket or something? would that work?

You'd need something the same thickness across the whole of the mating faces. Otherwise you'd cause an angle between the box and engine.

My thoughts - the gasket was there in the first place installed by the manufacturer. I would pick one up from somewhere like ebay or gaskets for classics install and be done with it.

At a push I can't see why some instant gasket wouldn't do a similar job. The stock gasket is so thin it can't make much odds on clutch arm position.

JC

lol i went to the motorfactors today to get a sheet of gasket material, he didn't have any, why did i not think that a sierra would use the same gasket?! i'm not very clever... lol

ebay it is then

I've used silicone on a few including my locost with no issue

silicone (or that blue gasket stuff you get) it is then. i can always take it apart and replace later if i need to

May not be relevant, but if your using a different bell housing to the one originally fitted check that the housing face fits flush over the layshaft end if its the type with the long push through layshaft.
The stub shaft version has a flange screwed onto the front and some bellhousings are pocketed to clear the this. If used on the non stub version it can let the shaft walk out.
Guess how I found out.

quote:

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Originally posted by Chippy
If you mean the one that goes between the gearbox and the bell housing , then yes they are needed. There are shafts that go through the front of the box, so you would have an oil leak if the gasket was omited. HTH Ray

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just squished some loctite instant gasket round it and bolted it up. i'll leave it til tomorrow to cure and then i'll stand it on its end for a while to see what it does. if it leaks i'll get a proper gasket, if not, i'll leave it for now. engine's away still. hopefully get it back in 2 weeks or so. i'm going to put the car together, make sure it all works then strip it all down, paint it, and put it back together again anyway

sorry, i forget who it was that said about them being pocketed, but my bell housing isn't so happy days. thanks for warning me though

it won't leak as long as you have silicone round the end of the selector shaft and the layshaft where they show on the bellhousing face of the gearbox

i ran blue instant gasket all round the selector shaft and lay shaft, and also round the outside of the whole mating surface.
i bolted it together last night, and there's a satisfying bead of blue all round the outside of the mating surfaces, like 1mm bead all round