Getting the car ready and the engine back in

Here are a series of short clips showing some of the details of the engine compartment, the types of things you can address while the engine is out.   Now is the time to deal with items like the inner CV joints, motor mounts, shift linkage, making any repairs to the brake lines, steering, radiator shrouds, and so on…. any kind of work that is usually MUCH more difficult with the engine in the way!

We’ll start with a general look and clean up of the engine compartment:

 

And as we fix a few small items and get ready to set the engine back in:

 

Now, the engine is hanging on the hoist as we shoehorn it back in:

 

Finally a little help from our lovely assistant with her smaller hands:

Gearbox Back Together

We’ll try to catch up a little…. Our gearbox is all back together!  We’ve covered various details of building them before, so just a quick look at what we did to cure the grinding 2nd gear, and a last look inside our A+ Rod change gearbox, and the usual set up of the differential bearing shims.  You can see that I installed a center oil pick-up, and really put this together from scratch, including cleaning and painting the case as I would for a complete rebuild….  You can’t go much deeper than replacing 2nd on the main-shaft!

Physics Tricks: Make the gearbox 8 feet long

I’ve explained to quite a few people how to bolt a length of 2 by 4 to a gearbox to be able to keep the thing from rotating as you go to loosen or tighten the big pinion and input gear nuts. Or bolting the box to a stout bench… If you don’t have air tools, or don’t want to use impact against the gears, you can get an easy grip on the case to apply lots of force GENTLY.
Here, I’ve locked the box in first and fourth. I did not capture how to do this on the rod-change linkage… you must rotate the shift stub shaft out of engagement to be able to move the shift-forks independently, then manually slide the hub collars to engage 2 gears at once. As all gears are in constant mesh, nothing can turn with two different ratios locked. Now if you can grab the box securely, you can apply the necessary pressure gently to get it (un)done!

If anyone wants to see the linkage trick, leave a comment! I probably have another case I could show.  Specific questions make for good relevant content, so ask away!

Inside the Gearbox: Finding the Grinding

As expected, once we got into the gearbox, we find that the synchro or baulk ring on second gear had worn all the way down such that it did not synchronize the gear speed to the shift-hub, resulting in that big crunch going into second. In this video, I show how you can spot a worn synchro, very useful if you want to get an idea of the condition of used gearbox without taking it apart.

Disconnecting the shift-linkage and axles on a Rod-change Classic Mini Cooper

Let’s continue with our repair of second gear for Mike’s beautiful Mark 1 Mini. Unfortunately, getting to 2nd gear does require a complete disassembly of the gearbox, so that means getting the engine out of the car. This one is a bit more challenging because this car is so nicely detailed, AND has the proper servo-assist Cooper S disk brakes, adding to the complexity and care required for working in the engine compartment. But of course, we’re the experts, so we can do it!
I often get asked about getting the shift linkage and axles separated from the engine, so here’s a short video showing me doing most of the required under-car work to get the engine out! Thanks to my lovely assistant Tisha for doing the camera work.

Cooper Road Mini’s latest project

Lets introduce you to our latest project! Our new Friend Mike looked me up after he bought a beautifully restored 1967 Mini Cooper S that turned out to have one of my engines from about eight years ago! As many of these powerful engines do, 2nd gear was getting hard to engage without a crunch, indicating the synchro or baulk ring is likely worn out, keeping it from synchronizing 2nd gear to the main-shaft, resulting in that crunch we all know!
Ride along with us as we test drive the car up Red Dog Road near the Cooper Road Mini Compound. I show a way of shifting by “cheating” a little to work around the bad synchro, to “save” the gearbox from continuing the destruction until you have the time to take it apart.