gearbox woes...anyone got a 4 speed manual gearbox?

Rimmer Bros currently list reconditioned LT95s at £381, so I'd think the price was rather too much. I wouldn't have thought there was £600 worth of labour involved.

How prepared are you to get stuck into it yourself?

I'm just in the process of rebuilding one myself and I think it's just possible that the reverse gear problem could be addressed without taking the box out of the vehicle.

Nick

Thanks for the info.

I'm not very mechanically minded, but I have a mate who is :) I can't afford to have it off the road for long, since it's the tow vehicle for my business.

It does seem that it sounds like something has come adrift in the reverse gear selector and then rattles around, intermittently affecting

2nd. The rattle is definitely from the top of the gearbox...any ideas - is this possible? Is it easy to remove the top cover to gain access to the selector rods?

On mine (Early Rangie) it looks as though it might be possible to get at the selector shafts by taking the plate round the gearstick off. Otherwias the floor will have to come out which is a potentially long job.

Watch out for dropping stuff (roll pins, springs, detent balls etc) into the gearbox while the selector cover is off. It's a pig of a job retrieving them again. If you take the top cover off, be particularly vigilant about the three springs which sit in recesses in the cover and may stick to it when it's lifted, just long enough to fall into the box.

If the noises are really coming from the top of the transmission it seems possible that the reverse selector has come loose on the shaft (it would have to have sheared a roll pin to do this, and I cant see how it would affect the 1st/2nd second shaft) or the interlink at the back end of the reverse shaft has come loose (this might be more likely since it's held on with a pinch bolt.

In the first instance the selector shaft will not be moving sometimes and in the second it will. Easy diagnostic is whether or not the reverse light always come on even when the problem shows (the reverse lights switch is actuated by the selector shaft moving).

Nick

Rimmer say that they don't have any reconditioned LT95's and won't be getting any. They say that they would need my box to refurbish. I've heard this from more than

1 supplier now.

Anyway, I found a local gearbox specialist who has booked it in for next monday, and will remove and refit the gearbox for £250 plus parts. He will also fit my own supplied clutch and slave cylinder while it's there. He test drove it, pronounced the box to be quiet for a landrover and says that apart from a few bearings etc and finding the actual reverse gear fault there shouldn't be much in the way of parts. We'll see.

He had a look underneath and told me that on my year the box would come out from underneath since the crossmember isn't in the way, and even if it was, it is bolted rather than welded. According to him, my 1984 110 is half way between a series and a later defender in this respect - anyone argue with this?

you could check the gear lever bottom end, we just had similar problems and whilst swapping the box discovered that the ends of gear levers are not all the same, the traditional series one has a approx 1/2 inch solid ball with a groove cut round it to hold an O ring, if O ring goes then little is affected except its metal on metal rather than being softened by the O ring. The alternative has no real ball but a big fat ballish shaped roller about 1/2 inch long that is fitted to end of lever, it would appear to be pushed on the end then a press used to flatten the end of the lever to hold it on, so likely no repair is possible. In our case the roller had disintigrated which meant we were trying to change gear with the end of the lever, which gave about 1/4 inch less travel and lots of gearbox problems!

Hi Danny,

Let us know how you get on would you? I have a dying 101 gearbox which I'd be tempted to have rebuilt. Conversion to auto is the current alternative, which is more expensive / risky / interesting!

I also have a Rangie box sitting on the drive - I don't know how easy it would be to swap the bellhousing and mainshaft to convert it to 101 dimensions.

But if your man is good then I'd be inclined to let him have a go at the 101 box.

Cheers

Tim