Oi Grumble!

The box is pretty much in - can let you know how the ratios work early next week (I hope. Poor Warren has not had an easy time of this job).

In case you were away sunning y'self, there's a little spreadsheet to help work out the ratios here:

Yup, tanned me bonce a treat...

Flipin 'eck now thats what I call a good answer :-)

Will be get the piccys of the work? And now Warrens perfected the art I may just call on him in the future :-)

Lee D

On or around Fri, 13 Aug 2004 16:29:53 +0100, Mother enlightened us thusly:

is this the auto conversion?

which configuration did you opt for in the end?

Indeedie! Rather than mess about with another LT95 and get the replacement transfer kit corrected (which I will do at some point) I thought I'd use the opportunity to further stress my poor chum Warren...

ZF 4 speed (yes, I know the 3 speed is prolly stronger, but I got a _very_ good deal on a blinding quality 4 speed...) Transfer ratios as per the spreadsheet. I opted for a geared transfer box mainly because there's more flexibility when looking at ratios whereas the Borg Warner is fixed. The BW also suffers from chain stress, which'll stretch...

In a 101 this is noooo small conversion. Heat is an issue as the torque converter generates a lot of it. I thoerefore got a 44 row Mocal oil cooler - the biggest I could get quickly. They can do 50 and 60 row coolers, but I thought that'd be overkill ;-)

The props will need changing, but I'll have some made once Warren has worked out the exact lengths. Here's the nifty bit... With a little careful mounting you can actually reduce the very steep angle of the props (common cause of overrun rumble on a 101).

It's possible (well, Warren has done so) to use the existing gearbox mounting brackets, however an LT95 sort of 'hangs' from the mountings, where the ZF sits on them. Warren has made some awesome dogleg brackets (strong enough to hold an aircraft engine by the looks of them).

The auto shift and hi-lo are on the front where the handbrake and old hi-lo were sited, oil cooler just in front of the rad and engine oil cooler (s*dding good job we've cured the overheating!). Kickdown needs an adapter plate making, hi-lo ratio and difflock will be on one lever as I figured I've never used difflock in high ratio and (mostly) use difflock when I need low ratio - I know this may have a few downsides, but it's good enough for my pattern of use over the last 25 odd years.

More to come...

On or around Fri, 13 Aug 2004 22:47:59 +0100, Mother enlightened us thusly:

the ZF gets good reviews as well, and is used to transmit some serious amounts of power in other applications.

Longer box/bellhousing combo I assume, moving the T-box back?

wonder if you'd do better using RR style ZF mounts? The mounts, of course, go on the T-box not the actual main gearbox.

what fuel system are you running on Grumble? I'd've thought the kickdown linkage was available from some species of Rangie, as stock parts. The ZF auto was certainly fitted to several kinds of injection engine. Not quite sure about a carb one. Mind, I've somewhere got the linkage I used on the

3.5 carb engine, which came off a Rover P5B auto, and was modified to suit. If you're running a normal carb manifold, you're welcome to it if you want.

HIF44 SU carbs, LPG and Petrol. Linkage was easy apparently, and works! Thanks for the offer though, muchly appreciated :-)

The ZF is a great box. Mine comfortably handles the 280-ish bhp that my

130 throws at it and it does a *lot* of heavy towing. The secret is keeping the fluid temperature down (with a decent cooler) and to most definitely use a fully synthetic ATF (I use Redline). Even so, it does generate huge amounts of heat!

I have a spare ZF box (and 3.9 EFI engine) and I'm seriously contemplating this conversion in my 101, so I'll be interested to hear how your conversion materialises. What transfer box are you using, an LT230?

Malcolm