Thread: Oh dear! Loud bang and clatter racket.

but it seems that Landy boxes are fairly straight forward to deal with


He He He ----------

Cheers Arthur

Well, drained the oil from both the gearbox and transfer box. Both came out pretty clean with no "bits and pieces" in it. All's good so far.

I'm finding a huge number of bolts either missing or loose and also discovered the front drive shaft is back-to-front, according to the manual anyway. (The manual states the splined slip joint should be at the axle end as opposed to the rear driveshaft that requires the splined slip joint adjacent to the handbrake drum). I'm also a little concerned at the vast array of different sizes of nuts and bolts. Some bolts barely long enough to flush the end of the nut, others so long there's over an inch of thread exposed through the nut, different sized bolts for the same job as others, even a couple of gutter bolts with the very flat and square nuts!

I also had a minor issue with unhitching the rear driveshaft. The instructions say to undo the nuts at the brake drum end and slide the front part of the shaft back along the splines to clear the bolts. Unfortunately mine didn't slide far enough to clear the bolts and I ended up having to remove the driveshaft at the diff end too and dropping the whole shaft out.

So I'm having a lunch break (2pm) but will get back to it. Just have to remove the clutch slave cylinder which will be a bit of a trick as it has modified bracket arrangement to suit the Holden conversion and I can't get to one of the bolts. After that I think I just have to sling around the boxes and see if my engine hoist will fit in the cabin area to lift them out. All going well I'll have the boxes on the workshop floor by tonight.

More later.
Ciao
John B

Good work John! The bolts (most of them) can be replaced with high tensile UNF.

Stripping the boxes is not difficult, so once you get them apart it is easy to order everything you need at once. If you need bearings, buy Timken, or similar from a bearing shop,

Cheers Charlie

Hi John

Good to see that no rubbish has come out with the oil.

If you suspect any sizes are wrong with the bolts as you remove them, before you move on get the correct size sorted out and purchase replacements.
Another tip is, when putting aside your fittings, dont throw them all into a container together, place them instead in snap top bags and write on the bag their positions.

As far as parts are concerned, there are some good overhaul kits available, but there is no subsitute for having someone that is a good mechanic, showing you what to look for in the way of damage or wear.

Goodluck with your project and cheers Arthur.

I promised some photo's so here we go:
A couple of examples of missing or loose bolts:




A days work in going from this:


To this:




The contents of the hole are now on the floor in the workshop:






I'm looking forward to seeing what I find inside, but another week of earning a crust has likely got in the way. I might be able to do a bit tomorrow night but that's likely to be it for the week. If I'm not careful the Australasian Safari will get in the way before I get a chance to complete the job. I still have to prepare my bike for that as a backup plan to my new Rally bike not arriving in time.

BTW, thanks all those watching this thread and offering advice. Much needed and appreciated.

Ciao
John B

Originally Posted by wrinklearthur

Hi John

Could be the Holden motor with a crook adaptor , if they are not directly in line with the input shaft, there can be a considerable load on the intermediate bearing, when it fails it causes the main shaft to lock up and leaves you with the symptoms as you have described.

See if you can find yourself another adaptor plate and clutch setup, to match the other gearbox and then swop it all over.

When you are onto a good setup, it should give you years of trouble free service .

Good luck! Arthur

Well I had a 1982 sIII with a Holden 202 that ate gearboxes it was the adapter that was the problem that said .I still say that holeds are good when they are in holdens, good to see you are doing the job your self hope you just get the time to do it ,never seems to be the time for us boys and are toys.

I'm wondering if my problem might also be related to the missing and loose bolts on the joint between the bell-housing and the adapter plate. If the alignment is so critical then I imagine the bolting situation could well result in poor alignment, or at least variable alignment. I think there were only three bolts/nuts that I had to use a socket on, all others were either loose or missing. All three of the tight bolts were on the bottom half of the adapter, with all the top bolts loose or missing.

Originally Posted by JayBoRover

I'm wondering if my problem might also be related to the missing and loose bolts on the joint between the bell-housing and the adapter plate. If the alignment is so critical then I imagine the bolting situation could well result in poor alignment, or at least variable alignment. I think there were only three bolts/nuts that I had to use a socket on, all others were either loose or missing. All three of the tight bolts were on the bottom half of the adapter, with all the top bolts loose or missing.

It could be that the loose bolts are the cause of the gearbox problems, but it is equally possible that the loose bolts are the result of misalignment.

John