Type 9 gearbox all gears found !

That right all gears found, just had a small vacation ! Well i was right the casting was out of position thats now fixed the welding is nearly finished. A coat of black paint will be next.

So that brings the first mod to a close, a good tidy up of all my tools is in order I will then take some pictures of all the mods as i take the box apart for the final time. Yippe. That will be this weekend. I will also put it back together make sure all parts are clean i will pre lubricate the gears with a little oil before sealing the box for good.

There is one small matter to attend to when it's apart, a oil gallery has to be drilled from the selector housing into output shaft gallery as i have removed the oil seal on the selector shaft. This will allow a small of oil past it and that has to go somewhere. Now i cannot guarantee that that selector chamber is oil tight so i will have to seal over the welding i have done to make sure it is leak tight.

Next

I have finished the drawing for the adapter plate and will shortly be ordering the material getting the long abandoned lathe tools out of my toolbox in readiness for the take of turning the main adapter. This may have to wait for another payday we'll see.





So next month i will trial fit everything in the car sort the gearbox mount out. I will then pull the whole lot so that i can get the sump off the engine to baffle it and fit the spacer ring on the exhaust for my O2 sensor.


The gearbox is now finished the picture shows the ford gearbox and the original triumph box below.

More type9 gearbox welding

I think i have found the fault of the two missing gears and it wasn't the missing bush. I took great care to get the selector piece pinned in the right part of the shaft but I completely missed that the casting cutoff has to be repositioned with as much care.

Luckily i had barely gone past the tack weld stage so it was still easy to remove, Now I think that I was about 1mm out sideways before. I will have to tack weld in a new position and try again. This will hopefully happen soon as i pick up the gas i need to continue welding tomorrow.

In the mean time I have turned a bearing bush. Bearing material was going to be expensive as I would have to buy a long length to use 20mm of it. My solution was to make a bearing carrier out of aluminium that i had and add a high spec metal composite bearing bought from a company called Brammer. Once fitted it was clear that it would need to be shortened because I could not get the full throw of the gearlever in the forward and back position. I will tweak this tomorrow and recheck that all is well

Type 9 Speedo cal and selector shaft

Speedo calcs

I have been checking the gearing on the speedo drive to see what the difference will be.

the Spit has a 6 tooth gear on the output shaft as does the ford. The spit has a 23 tooth gearwheel on the speedo output and the ford has a 22 tooth.

This gives the spit a ratio of 3.83 turns of the gearbox output shaft to 1 of the speedo output.
The ford work out at 3.66 : 1 This is a difference of 4%.

This would make the speedometer over reads by 2.8MPH at 70MPH, 2.0MPH at 50MPH, 1.6MPH at 40MPH and 1.2MPH at 30MPH. To me that does not seem that bad so i might well not bother getting the speedo recalibrated.

Just to add to all this there are speedo gears with 21,22 and 24 teeth available but not 23 ! would be nice if i could find one of those.

More gearbox progress.

I have also cut down the selector shaft and re pinned the gearstick selector fork. And as i guessed I'm now missing 2 gears ! Doh. However this is not entirely unexpected, the problem lies with the fact there is a bearing missing. I cut the original out when i modified the nose casting. Once this bearing is replaced I'm sure the shaft will turn more and bend less giving me back those 2 missing gears. If it does not i do have a plan B. More of that later probably.

Type 9 gearbox nose welding

Well i finally plucked up the courage to cut into the gearbox casting. I could not take out as much as i wanted but 99mm is a good start to get the gearlever poking out in the correct place.

The cutting and first session of welding took nearly 5 hours. Mainly because i have never welded aluminium before, it took at least an hour to get my welder set correctly so that i could produce some decent welds. I will have to go back and finish the welding soon.

I will strip the gearbox of it's selector shaft this week end and hopefully get the shaft machined at work next week. I will then try the mechanism to see if i still have 5 forward and 1 reverse gear. If this is ok a good degrease and spot of paint should ready the box for it's adapter plate.

Taking of which i did say the design was likely to change and yep it has. I was trying to get the clutch release cylinder clamp as part of the plate, this now look less viable. I am following the route of modding the existing clamp by inclining the cylinder away from the gearbox. I will have to weld more material to the bosses on the clamp and file to and angle and relocate the mount holes so that everything lines up. Now this setup will never be perfect but it will work well.

Once the clutch slave cylinder issue is sorted i will finish the design of the adapter and get on with making it. The only cloud on the horizon that i can see is i can't find a supplier of M12x1.5mm cap head screws. If i cant get them yet another redesign of the adapter plate will be required.