lo-fi

I couldn't help but ask supercharger? Sorry... I believe some of the really early carbs did have removable and adjustable jets, so it depends what era they came from. The type fitted to RRC, which seem to be the most common, are a press fit and a bit of a pain to change. I ended up chucking the carb bodies in the lathe and using the tailstock to press the jets in. There are a couple of different jet sizes, but you'll have the biggest in the V8 versions anyway. I found that mine ran ok on the 3.5 needles but the wideband lambda showed it running quite lean ~3000rpm upwards. I don't like seeing 16:1 under load! Happy new year! May it be one of happy, productive invention and tinkering.

That is a nice 3.5 to build up. All the right bits. Pop a 3.9+ in, then . Ping me a PM with some details when you're ready and I'll happily send those needles over. B1FN if I recall correctly. I think measurements of my homebrew ones were in my 109 build thread too, so should be enough to get you going. Going to (twin) turbo this one? I certainly can't fault my Strombergs, she starts and runs perfectly hot or cold. Nothing against SU, but like yourself, it's what I had and SU's were not easy to get hold of.

Just love the look of this one. Purposeful, utilitarian, and kinda mean looking! I can probably help with needles to get the Strombergs set up for the 3.9 cam. I'm actually running a 3.9, but I'd be willing to bet the difference in fueling required is more to do with the cam than 0.4 litres of displacement. I've got a set of the most juicy stock needles I could find, but they still weren't giving quite enough fuel from mid range up, so I ended up rolling my own. Might be perfect on the 3.5 - happy to send for you to try. If not, a few minutes with a bit of wet and dry with the needle spinning fast in the pillar drill does the trick! Keep the updates coming

I've used the method Tanuki describes many times with great success. The other option, which I've not tried myself, is chemical: A bit of patience required, but it looks quite effective! I swear by a little Loctite low strength lock and seal (243, I think) on bolts near to coolant. Certainly seems to save future headaches.

A mate of mine who used to be in the forces reckons my 109 "smells like a tank".

I've just done mine Even made some EP90 aftershave for a mate of mine this year. His love of the smell of gear oil has been a running gag for years - the kind of thing probably only landy owners would understand! Merry Christmas all.

That is a fair point. I put them on imgur because I wasn't sure how much I was allowed to directly upload. Always a worry post PB :/ I'll see what I can do, may have a quick chat with other a moderator about the best way to sort

Cheers Western You give me too much credit, Mike! I'm no pro, and definitely consider myself a fellow mortal. The welding... Well, it's not special metal, and if you can weld already it's no big deal. Setting the machine up so it doesn't under cut at the edges of the weld bead is about the only special trick. There was a bit of soul searching as to whether I was doing the right thing - time will tell! What I would say - having done this and a couple of LT230's - is that it's not actually that scary once you get into it, and really enjoyable work. Don't be intimidated I just studied the manual, looked, poked, measured, made tools, got myself and the space organised and got into it, trying to be as tidy and methodical as possible. The manual is excellent, and nothing more complex than a feeler gauge is needed during the inspection process. I did consider handing over a large sum of money to Ashcroft for a recon, but I just couldn't resist a little challenge... I can't wait to get it refitted and see what it's like! I'll post the YouTube link when I've got it edited and uploaded, I think it gives a nice overview of the teardown process and what's lurking inside. Thanks again to everyone for the warm reception. Makes me want to do more! /Ian

Tube, angle and flats disappear like they're going out of fashion round here, Soren. I'm sure you know that feeling I can't quite get how that works either, it would be a pain not to be able to use the doors...

One last thing I forgot to put in the post.. Contraption for taking the gearbox out: So much easier than wrestling with the engine crane in the way. It rests on the chassis at the bottom - perfect for an electric or chain hoist.

Thanks guys All I could find were about five split case photos and a few forum posts about bearing noise and selector fork wear, so it seemed rude not to.

And it's clean inside, I promise Much as it doesn't look like it from the outside. Life is too short to scrub every last grain out of the textured ali!

Hello all! Well, my gearbox broke, so a great excuse for a rebuild thread. It's in a 109 with a 3.9 on carbs, has been fine if a little noisy (they're notorious for this as they use ball bearings rather than tapered roller) but finally gave up as I was towing a newly bought Sankey back from Tewkesbury. To cut a long story short, I as bumbling along on the A417 when I heard a little "ping" noise. You know, that kind that really make you nervous and you spend a minute wondering if it's just a stone flung from the tyre? Then another and the a nasty, heavy clattering noise from the gearbox. I was in fourth at the time, and still driving fine despite the noise. Pulled over, transfer in neutral, run through the gears. I thought the layshaft rear bearing might have collapsed, but it turns out fifth has popped off its retention ring and was flapping about in the breeze. Pics of that will follow when do my actual post-mortem of that box - I ended up rebuilding my spare. The spare is interesting. On first inspection, it looked great inside - clean as a whistle. But the input shaft had a little more play than I'd have liked, so I took the front housing off to find this: The cage has busted clean through the spot welds and come apart. Not ideal, so apart it came. I have a video of this, which will need some editing before it goes up as it's quite long! In order to disassemble the solid case, you have to make up some puller tools. Main and input shaft bearings are press fit into both the housings and onto the shaft, and being ball bearings you can't separate the inner and outer track like a taper roller. So a few bits of box section and a little machining later: I also made up the tool required to press the rear bearing along with the case onto the output shaft. The official tool is vaguely tube shaped and supposed to engage on the rear face of the inner bearing track, picking up on an internal thread in the end of the output shaft. I couldn't find a bolt to match, and didn't like the sound of this anyway, so I went a slightly different way: The collet picks up on the radius of the output splines and gets retained by the outside taper into a collar, just like valve spring collets. No chance of it slipping off or stripping threads here! You'll see the finished article in action later. After some cleaning measuring and faffing about I won't bore you with (the manual covers this far better than I can), it's time to reassemble. I did have some remedial work to do on the iron front housing that contains the oil pump and takes the thrust load of both front bearings. As you can see, there's a few thou of fretting there, and it's not even. It's too shallow to maching, so the best solution is to rake out the surface plate and get lapping: A half hour later: Much better. Now it can be assembled with new seals, pump, oil feed ring and O-ring: Next up is pressing the bearings into the front plate and main case. No pics as it's pretty banal. I do with I'd taken some photos of the bearings from Ashcroft, though. They've used different style -and longer lasting - bearings that are the right width and ID, but too small on the OD so they're pressed into a machined collar. Lovely work and fitted tighter than the proverbial. Input shaft goes in, baulk rings and bearing on: Preassembled mainshaft goes on, layshaft and gasket get put in place: The front layshaft bearing is cylindrical roller bearing, the outer of which gets pressed in sitting 5mm proud of its final position to make fitting easier. Reverse gear gets fitted, but retained temporarily by a screwdriver This allows it to be wiggled around the layshaft as the main case is fitted. Spot the deliberate mistake; I fitted it backwards and realised just after I took the pic: Main case goes on. There are supposed to be guide pins, but these would have interfered with my stand: Now the home made special tool goes on: And the whole lot gets pressed together by winding the two nuts up against the plate: The tool worked like a charm. The gearbox is now taken off the stand and the layshaft front bearing gets tapped home, then the front housing goes on with a fresh gasket: Torque to spec and we're done. You can see the front bearing plate is temporarily retained with a couple of bolts and spacers: Now work starts on fifth gear. Both my boxes has sheared the pin in the synchro hub that drives the plate slipper pad retaining plate and output seal collar. Dave Ashcroft was kind enougb to supply an updated part with a 5mm pin, rather thin the 3mm, but I couldn't hunt down or didn't want to pay for the plate, pin or collar to match.... The plate was worn from spinning against the hardened hub and collar due to the sheared pin, so this was scrap. The fit on the shaft was also a frankfurter down an alleyway - not acceptable. A 3mm bit of plate got turned up, outside first: Then inside: And fits snugly: Now for the pin hole. I could have measured, but it was simpler to use the pin as a punch. Anneal, the grind a piece of tool steel with a point, fit to hub, give plate a tap against it to leave a punch mark: Check and drill: Lovely. Grind the pin flat to remove the point and massage the keyway in the collar to suit: The angle grinder is too cumbersome for this operation, so I made an arbor for an old slitting disk to fit into the die grinder. A much more delicate tool: Polish up the seal collar on the lathe: And it all fits together beautifully: Because the plate is slightly thicker, a new "selective washer" needs to be made to give the right clearance against the retaining clip. This is the clip the had let go and caused my breakdown, so worth getting it cock on: At the time of writing, I'm still waiting for a new clip. These should, under now account, be re-used. Having got all that ready, attention turns to the layshaft. As you can see, a spacer is used to retain it in lieu or fifth. This allows the bearing retainer plate to be fitted. Two problems here: Firstly, it's fretted like the front housing. Second, it doesn't match the curve of the smaller main bearing OD.... It's not special steel, so I decided to build up with weld; both to eliminate the wear, and to add some extra to engage fully with the bearing outer track: Fitted, spacer removed, fifth fitted, new stake nut torqued to 160 lb ft. I quick gripped the box to the bench to do this: Staked with a round punch: The fifth selector assembly retains the top of the bearing too, and this had the same issues as the other plate: Spot the *cough* deliberate *cough* mistake: I fitted the selector ring the wrong way round. Easily rectified: As the 1st/2nd selector fork is steel, and the collar lands are quite skinny, it had suffered from wear. I built up with some silicone bronze and linished back until it was flush with the steel again. I didn't take enough pics In go the selector forks, interlocks, rods and retaining roll pins. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves: The rest is just a case of bolting covers on, which was a bit too banal for taking pictures! Oh, apart from getting the reverse gate spring back on: I hope it's interesting, anyway. I'll make the special tools are available for rent in return for a donation to the forum fund. It's really not too bad a job, and I actually really enjoyed it. For reference, a 109 with a sankey fits on large recovery lorry. RAC were really good about it - no problem at all. /Ian

It's not the only forum that's been very quiet lately. I've been a member of seriouslyseries.com for a good while, and it's never been so quiet despite being a very friendly, close knit bunch. Plenty of chatter on the Facebook group, but it's like YouTube comments on there (I'm sure everyone will know what I mean) with the wider rabble only one "join" click away. The photobucket ransom hasn't helped either... When in contrast, Facebook point blank refuse to delete anything. So many old threads are now dead unless you've discovered the joys of the chrome or Firefox fix plugin... If only they'd asked for a more reasonable sum, they'd probably be rolling in it now and the Internet would be a better place for it. Shame about LRO, I've found answers to many a Google in that forum. Other forums seem to have a similarly good archive, but again not so much happening lately. The wider question is: are the years of the independent forum numbered? When an overload of Facebook noise is ever present, will people bother to sign up and get involved in yet another community that doesn't try to invade their lives and grab their attention so pervasively or present it in a nice little "feed" for easy consumption? Another aspect is ease of use... Lots of people struggle uploading and linking images, photobucket nonsense aside. Facebook makes it easy as could be, particularly on mobile. User experience is also the same, no matter what group you're a member of. In a lot of ways this is "better": Single sign in. Unified user experience. General ease of use. Free, unlimited, unrestricted image uploads. Tapatalk is supposed to help with this, but frankly I hated it, and not every forum supports it anyway. I guess it boils down to a balance between ease of use and the barrier to entry being high enough to keep the empty vessels who make most noise away. Sorry for the essay, lots of interesting stuff buried in this one. I'll look forward to more informed discussion

When approaching something like this, have a think about what you're doing, and how the object in question might be described. So you might search for "200 tdi turbo clocking". Which you no doubt have and haven't had any useful results. You can draw a few conclusions from the this: nobody has written about clocking a 200 turbo specifically , "clocking" is the wrong term for what you're trying to achieve, or its fairly obvious how to do it, and nobody bothered to write it up. The first scenario is easy to deal with: it's a turbo. Nothing special about it. What kind of turbo? The answer is a quick Google away, and if memory serves, it's a variety of Garret T2. Ah ha. So you could search for "garrett T2 clocking". But maybe that doesn't yield anything helpful either? Well OK. Is there another term than clocking that people use? Or is there a more generic operation that people use that encompasses that? "disassembly"! So search for "T2 turbo disassembly". Bingo, you've probably got a YouTube or forum post with all the info you need. If not, try "rebuild" instead of disassembly. And so on. Google-Fu is less a problem of computer knowledge and more of iterative and lateral thinking. Start specific; broaden. Use the results to refine your search to match how people on t'internets actually describe the objects and actions you're interested in. Hope that helps, anyway! No black magic to it, just knowing how to play the game

One of my favourite suppliers is http://www.totalparts.co.uk Their parts finder category system is a bit poor, but the prices are good, service is great and they clearly state the manufacturer of the parts they're supplying. Best bit is, they don't seem to even sell Britpart, so no fear of those dreaded blue boxes turning up. LRparts.net has a nice electronic pictorial catalogue, so helpful for hunting down stuff you don't know the name of.

Purchasing an expanding reamer might get you out of trouble. Get a carbide burr in there first and bring it roughly back if it's really bad, or use it to pull things parallel if needed, then get a reamer in, clean up and get some pins made if you've not got a lathe yourself. Or you could bring it up to sleeve spec and use normal pins. Fair point about the 1" drill bit, fighting that in a hand drill would be a nightmare. Depending what space you've got to work with, hiring a magnetic base drill might work as a potential option. Interested to hear how you get on with this one

No worries worth taking a peek for the sake of a valley gasket, make sure you're not flogging a dead horse. Keep us posted on what you find - always interesting.

Under the valley gasket you can see through to the cam: https://goo.gl/images/hRGzXh Your have to squint a bit, but you'll soon be able to tell what state it's in if you turn it over a few times.

Many years ago I had a 3.5 that missed like that, and I could never sort, no matter what I tried with fuel or ignition. Turned out one of the cam lobes was so worn it was barely opening number 7 inlet valve. I bet if I had compression tested it, it would have read less than the rest. Whip the inlet off and have a look - the cam gives you a really good indicator of V8 health.

You're not having much luck! The inlet hoses have been known to delaminate and collapse internally, starving it of air, causing a rich condition, lack of power and black smoke. They usually "look OK" from a casual inspection. More a lack of air than too much fuel, but amounts to the same thing. Usually worse when hot. A restriction in the exhaust could also cause the same, of course. I only mention because you said you'd changed it... Piece of packing getting where it shouldn't, or even a manufacturing defect isn't impossible. Less likely than inlet hose, but worth throwing it in as a "cover the simple stuff first". Hope you get it sorted without too much fuss.

Is it easier to start if you squirt a little fuel into the intakes when cold? If so, you have a fueling problem, if not, you've likely got a spark problem. Have you balanced and tuned the carbs when you have had it running? One other thing I'd ask is when you rebuilt the carbs, are you sure you got all the bits of the choke mechanism on the right way? If I recall correctly, you can get one of the plates or linkage on 180 degrees out, so the holes don't line up. Also that the tiny little passages were clear of buildup. Mine weren't when I rebuilt them, and took some clearing. If it's too lean due to lack of working choke enrichment, it will be a pig to start, but still smell of unburned petrol - it's just too lean to burn. Obviously not a problem when hot. My 3.9 on rebuilt similar vintage Strombergs, a Bosch coil, Powerspark electronic points and standard leads starts hot or cold with the merest ticket of the starter, no special technique required other than setting the choke. Right out if it's really below freezing; less depending how cold. A tiny smidge for first start on hot summer days, and nothing if the engine is even the least bit warm. Could be weak spark as Bowie says, the Lucas stuff isn't always what it used to be even if it's brand new out if the box - that's why I've got a Bosch coil... Pop a squirt of fuel down the throat of each carb on the next cold start and see how it goes.

I'll be interested to know how you get on, I've got a couple of 2A bulkheads to do myself.

I've not had a whole bulkhead repaired, but I've had some repair panels from the welding wood: https://m.facebook.com/TheWeldingWood/?locale2=en_GB They're nothing short of exquisite quality. We had a good chat at the Leafers at t'pit event earlier this year too. Top guy, hell of a craftsman.

Marvellous! On the subject of small, nimble, light... Can I throw four wheel steering at you as an idea? I know that screams complication, but... How about something ingeniously simple and purely mechanical? I've got this model, and thought it was a lovely elegant solution. Very neat being infinitely variable between full rear steer, no rear steering and crabbing. I'm tempted to have a go myself one day, but seemed appropriate to share! Just a thought. SorryNotSorry for planting the seed of an idea