Super long title lol……Well my plan for holding off on rebuilding my gearbox until this December got ruined pretty quickly. Actually I started buying up parts to rebuild a spare box so I wouldn’t have to have my car down, that didn’t quite work out. What did happen was my gearbox started sounding different, having most of the parts already and about a month before my next mini trip I took the plunge and now minibox is down again.
I am starting to feel like Cole from Classic Mini DIY. He seems to have his motor out a lot and here I am less than 6 months since the last time this thing was out. I did some lazy things removing this that did not pay off (notice the scratched to hell manifold). Either way engine is out so I made quick work of the disassembly.
Now that the gearbox was on the bench it was time to take it apart. My initial thought on failing idler bearings was shot down when both idlers looked pretty good. So I proceeded to tear down the box. I did notice right away there was a bunch of plastic chunks and sludge on the oil pickup, so something definitely went wrong. I also could hear a distinct clicking sound when it turning by hand. After getting creative removing the pinion gear nut the answer to my question was answered… failed double roller…. I feel I got lucky on this.
Now that the nut was free I proceeded to disassemble the box some more. I got impatient and ended up trying to remove the first motion bearing with a pry bar rather than the puller that was on the way from Amazon… this cost me a little extra money as I chipped the input gear.
I eventually got the bearing race off, go figure the puller couldn’t grab it anyways so I managed to get the pry bar to work… without hurting the gear more… oh well lesson learned. Once the nut was off I was able to get the layshaft and the oil pickup out. I was finally able to get a closer look at the sludge as well. Then I went to wailing on the first motion shaft bearing (I bought brass drifts just for the occasion). I had to hit it way harder than I wanted to, and it flew out and hit the floor (getting careless it seems) luckily the gear hurt the concrete not the other way around. With fourth gear out now it was time to get the rest of the shaft out.
The double roller was a pain to remove, I am assuming this is because mine was all sorts of messed up. took a lot of beating wiggling and prying but I managed to get it out. I also managed to lose some of the synchro springs and ball bearings, good thing I have new ones. I then removed the remaining shift fork assembly, once I knocked the bolt out of the bottom of the case I reassembled it how it was in the box, this way when I reinstall I won’t have to remember too much.
The last part is a bit of a blur, I took apart the main shaft and took a bunch of pictures of the gears, I am not sure what is good and what needs to be replaced. I do know I need a new 1/2 shift fork, mine has a bunch of play. I don’t know if second gear is ok, the teeth look a bit rounded but I am not 100% sure. Either way here is a bunch of gear pics.
All that was left was to take the differential apart. I bought a new x pin to replace my current one. Honestly I probably could have saved some money and reused it but new one is here now so I took it apart to get the output shafts. Maybe ill sell this one for cheap to recoup some money, I have no idea what brand it is though. I also had to pull the bearing race and second idler out of the transfer case housing.
That is all for now, I have a couple shopping lists going with Guessworks and minispares at the moment. Hoping I can get a response on how my gears look from Guessworks so I can start buying up parts. I would really like to get them on the way as soon as possible. I have also ordered some DSN goodies while the engine is out, maybe I will finally have a non leaking timing cover. One last pic is of my pile of aluminum I plan on getting cleaned by some machine shop hopefully this week, need to call around first.
The Rust chronicles 