Which brings us to this weekend. First on the list of jobs was seeing what I could do about the rather wooly gearchange. It’s always been a bit hit or miss ever since I put the Type 9 in, but never really so bad that it got onto the “must be done” list. Given I…
I took Dave’s advice and cleaned up the old gaskets (with the ever faithful Mr Muscle wipes ) and the mating faces on the box. The received wisdom appears to be that there’s only two types of gasket sealant worth using on gearboxes; either a) “that thick sticky black shit” or b) “anything with RTV in…
Another day … another gearbox drop. Still, at least I managed it in an hour from start to finish this time, which is a new PB, as our Olympic athlete-types like to refer to these things. Well, it looks like it’s a case of mea culpa on two out of three leaks. The leaks on both sides at…
OK, time to get this car out of the garage and back onto the road. Thankfully it’s been like the rainy season up here for the last few weeks, so I don’t feel like I’ve missed out too much. First thing to deal with was the rear oil seal on the gearbox … I found out…
For the second weekend in a row, I’ve been “sent out to the shed” to “muck about with the car” Can’t complain Started off by cleaning up the starter motor … When you want to start the car, the solenoid (bottom left) pushes down on the spring & plunger (just above it), which pushes the cog…
Which numpty suggested I should change this gearbox? Oh, it was erm … me. I’ve lost count of how long I’ve spent doing the changeover, but about 80% of the time has been taken up with sorting out a revised crossmember. I started out with making a couple of arms from one inch angle iron…
Picked up a new clutch kit today, mainly because the fun and games getting the box back on for the trial-fit convinced me that I don’t want to be doing this all over again if the clutch goes for a burton in three months time. The other reason is that none of the local factors were…
So that this doesn’t drag on for too long, I picked up a 5-speed propshaft from my local supplier (capri_bits2 on eBay) for a very modest sum. It’s not had the fine misting of oil over it for all its working life, like the old one, so it’s a bit grottier on the surface, but…
Turns out I was approaching the problem from the wrong end. After consulting my array of vintage Capri manuals whilst partaking of a small sherry, it turns out that the spring clips in question were on the other end of the linkage rods. A few minutes later, after a bit of back and forth under…
Before I can put the new box in, I’ve got to get the old one out – and as I’m pretty sure that the hole for the gear lever is going to have to move, the first job was to remove the centre console. It was going fine, then I discovered a small box hidden…
Right, well … I can’t start taking the car apart yet as it needs to stay on the road for the moment, so I’ve had to satisfy myself with cleaning things up. Before starting, I got hold of a Haynes manual for the Sierra from a local charity shop for 75p and a new gasket…
After getting back from Santa Pod, I started thinking more and more about getting hold of a five-speed gearbox – mainly due to a combination of economy and more relaxed motorway driving. Loads of helpful folks told me I wasn’t being daft and that it made perfect sense The general consensus seems to be that if you…
Hoiked the car up onto the axle stands last night to “quickly” check the gearbox and diff oil levels, which I’ve kind of sort of been meaning to get round to for rather a long time I even had the right tool from Laser but for some reason it didn’t fit the drain plugs Had…