Hi all,

I've just completed a full rebuild and conversion to heavy duty bearings and long first gear in my Type 9 gearbox. I think it went pretty well (there wasn't too much swearing involved and I can still select all 5 gears!) and I understand how the whole thing works a lot better now. I bought all my replacement parts from BGH Geartech, who I found really helpful, full of advice and even agreed to inspect some of the parts for me to make sure they were OK to refit.

I've uploaded a load of photos to my archive if anyone's interested in seeing the strip and rebuild.

Pete

Good work there. Did you save much doing the work yourself against getting BGH to do it?

Thanks. I've just checked what it cost me and it came to about £570 all in. On the BGH website an exchange gearbox built to the same spec (what they call a Heavy Duty E2) would cost £995 plus about another £50 in carriage to send the old gearbox to them and get the replacement delivered, so quite a saving!

Pete

Excellent - I love build photos


Why did you need to grind the casing?

Thanks Robin. To get the new first ratio the mainshaft gear is smaller and the lay shaft first gear is larger, such that it does not clear the standard casing and needs a little grinding done to provide clearance.

Pete

Can you tell me what the bent rod was used for, I would imagine its for enabling the removal of the aluminium spacer block as I struggled getting mine off. I am about to start converting my gearbox to a long 1st gear set up. Ian

Hi Ian,

Yes it is to do with removing the aluminium sandwich plate. After the fifth gear is removed you can separate the sandwich plate from the main gear case but only by about 20mm. This is because the mainshaft is still fixed to the sandwich plate and it cannot be withdrawn because it is still meshed with the laygear.

You slide the bent rod in between the maincase and sandwich plate until you can get the shortest arm behind the laygear rear bearing. You then pull on the longest arm to lever the bearing out of the sandwich plate. Its probably easier to make two and use them together but I managed it with one alternately levering from each side of the sandwich plate to remove it.

Once the bearing is out you can partly withdraw the laygear so it drops into the bottom of the maincase and unmeshes from the mainshaft, which can then be easily removed.

The bent rod is 6-7mm in diameter and the arm lengths are 20mm, 100mm and 150mm. The 20mm leg needs to be filed flat on both sides until its about 4-5mm thick to get behind the bearing.

I've put together some notes for BlakeP on here, so if you are interested and U2U me your email address I can send them to you.

I hope all that's clear,

Pete

[Edited on 2-12-13 by Pete Jordan]

I'd be interested in those please!
Or you can come do mine for me!

Sure loggyboy. Send me your email address and I'll send them through to you. Not sure I want to be rebuilding any more gearboxes though!

One thing I can say is that, if you take it slow, make sure you have somewhere you can lay all the bits out in the right order, and follow the Haynes manual, it is not nearly as difficult to do as you might think. The most tedious bit I found was cleaning up all the components before putting it back together!

Pete

Pete, Received your information pack and found it very interesting, its given me renewed confidence with my own rebuild. Thank you very much. Ian

Glad to hear it Ian. Best of luck with your rebuild. Let me know if you've got any other questions.

Pete