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Spitfire gearbox overhaul


Jonah

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9 hours ago, thescrapman said:

Did you fit a brand new synchro cone, or a good secondhand one? 

 

Scrapman do you have any idea of the symptoms you get it the 1/2 gear synchro inner hub is installed the wrong way round? Reading through old threads on the subject I see one poster had problems selecting 3/4 and the mainshaft had a longitudinal crack in it!

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18 minutes ago, johny said:

Scrapman do you have any idea of the symptoms you get it the 1/2 gear synchro inner hub is installed the wrong way round? Reading through old threads on the subject I see one poster had problems selecting 3/4 and the mainshaft had a longitudinal crack in it!

Pretty sure in this case Johny that’d be extremely obvious. This is a three synchro box right? So the inner of the 1/2 hub is a few inches long and only has space for a synchro ring on one side. 

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7 hours ago, Jonah said:

I fitted new ones from Canley as part of a rebuild kit

Julian 

That might be part of the problem. I’m sure Pete will elaborate the reason, but it boils down to the machining process for the new ones that makes them slightly misshapen.  Good old ones are far preferable to new ones.

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you need to wring the ring onto the cone to make sure it grips ( a good push and twist action)

problem baulkrings were machined in a lathe chuck  so the grip of the jaws deformed the ring they must be machined on a mandrill or you get lobed useless rings 

these will rock on the gear cone not fully grip it  

but none of that should block engaging 2nd gear when stationary

Dave at Canley knows what he's at  i would expect their rings to be OK  

 

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When I disassembled the gearbox the 3rd and 4th rings seemed fine, 2nd had no grip at all and was really loose

i replaced all the rings with the new Canley ones so still have two from the previous build 

the box is on the bench and I’m in the process of getting the main shaft out

getting it out of the car the second time was so much easier with the benefit of experience!

julian 

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The thing is its difficult to think of anything that would prevent the hub outer sleeve from engaging with the main gear. The synchro ring would have to be awfully out of round to keep the hub so far away that this was the result!

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I disassembled the mainshaft carefully but couldn’t see any obvious mistakes in the assembly

looking at the synchro hubs the rings are a good tight moving fit

i disassembled the hubs to remove the springs and ball bearings, the longer springs were fitted to the 3rd/4th hub, is that correct?

I couldn’t find any shims under any of the springs which may be correct

the only other thought I had was whether the 1st/2nd hub plunger under the ball bearing was aligned properly as the sleeve was inserted

julian 

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Thanks Johny, the WSM doesn’t seem to indicate which hub should have the longer springs, but they’re definitely different lengths between hubs

i can see from the WSM how I might have missed aligning the master spline with the interlock plunger correctly 

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Looking at the sectional diagram of the gearbox the spring pockets of the 3/4 hub look deeper than the 1/2 so should have the longer springs. Perhaps you can confirm this by measuring their relative depths? This is also backed up by looking at the springs for sale at Rimmerbros whose diagram also shows a spacer at the bottom of each pocket but of course its pretty difficult to verify if you got one in there or not...

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long springs for 1/2nd   shorter are 3/4th  

the shims are to adjust the "pop" load of the sleeve  and not normally needed  

if you have some bathroom scales its easy enough to click the sleeve and watch for the load reading 

i wouldnt bother it moves quite firmly by hand it will work ok in the box 

did you try operating the sleeve with the mainshaft out before disassembling it ???

Pete

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the long and short is how i remember it  

but thats not to say the grey matter has it mixed   what you do need is the  sleeve detent break load to be something like whats in the manual

i ask again did you try to shift the sleeve with the mainshaft on the bench ???

as said simple test is bathroom or similar scales and fire the sleeve off its detent watch the load you get 

if its too high fit the shorter springs  and recheck    

wehave done all this a longtime ago but i cant find it 

 

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Both hubs are reassembled and the break loads both measure 20lbs

I’m very confident that I hadn’t aligned the second speed synchro unit with the master spline when I originally assembled the mainshaft, so hoping this was the cause of the problem

on inspection I’ve noticed damage to one of the 3rd speed mainshaft gear teeth, pic below, was wondering if this is significant enough to need a replacement?

thanks Julian 1B6EEE18-FA80-44DB-80D4-D86BDB92C110.thumb.jpeg.ea4b2f36a2aaf32d536214f43347de15.jpeg

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I think best to accept that damage as its minimal and any new gear wont be worn to the laygear so could generate worse noise. I take it the synchro hub in the picture isnt pushed fully home as its not completely engaged with the gear is it?

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if its the small chamfered loss on the end of the tooth  just use a carborundum stone to fettle a lead in to the tooth chip

on production small tooth marks were ground off before the days of dremmels if the gear produced a knock 

so they just removed /smoothed  the offender with a whizzy grinder its not in a full contact zone  , not to worry 

if you had the 2nd gear hub lock out of align that would stop the sleeve and baulkring aligning  so think you have the culprit 

Pete

 

Edited by Pete Lewis
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