It's amazing stuff isn't it........

Great that it works.....

and now of into the car with it.... to make it run your engine.....

All the components are on the board, the LEDs light up when they should, it talks to the laptop. Ladies and gennelmen, I think we can say it works, .

I still have to clean the board with acetone to remove the flux residue, and finish assembling the box. Then there'll be a bit of a delay as I'll need to get hold of another BMW loom to cut up and reuse the fuse/relay box and connectors.

Grats Joolz!

Harley

I'm preparing another gearbox to go in the car, using a mixture of parts from my broken LNA 'box and a GSA 5sp. I've cut clearance holes in the bellhousing for the brake discs and removed the input shaft, this is all the LNA, I'm hoping not to split the 5sp.

The question, I know these boxes aren't anyone's speciality, but are there any parts I should change as a matter of course? It's a big job to fit, so I'm hoping that once it's in, it'll stay there.

Hey Joolz,

I've been waiting for a reply to your question also! I asked the same thing about an LNA box a while back and had no replies, so it seems it is fit it and see ;(

I wish you all the best!

Harley

Hi Harley, yeah looks like no-one knows . It does need a new input shaft seal in the bellhousing though, I can see that much. I'll phone the GS specialists and see if I can order one, and ask his advice at the same time.

Joolz,
if I hadn't been so busy building up a couple of A series gearboxes, I'd have suggested renewing that needle roller bearing at the front end of the main shaft.
That looks to have locked up on your 'dead' box, hence the galling between its outer shell and the housing.
Mind you, it would mean splitting the cases...

ken

Right, I picked up the 5sp 'box and started by giving it a bit of a clean, I hate working on dirty stuff (this is after, I'm not that obsessive).




I gave Rob Moss at Chevronics a call to see if there were any weak points in these 'boxes that he could warn me about, or what parts he would recommend changing before fitting it. He suggested replacing the input shaft seal, which I was going to anyway, and the output shaft seals. He also suggested I could check the bearings in the tail for any sign of pitting. I took the rear cover off and the bearings are well hidden behind the 5th gear pinion, I started disassembling it but was quickly ambushed by the 'ping-fvckits'. Luckily I found the little buggers and spent an hour getting them back in their holes. That was enough to convince me that the bearings were probably fine, they did feel completely smooth when turning the pinions by hand.

DANGER, here be 'ping-fvckits'! You can just see the top of a small coil spring that's propelled a ball bearing into the far corner of the workshop.


For comparison here is the back of the 4sp LNA, even though the bearings are right there, these ones have a plastic cage retaining the balls so it's still not possible to see the bearing surface.


So far everything I see in this gearbox gives me confidence that it's a good one, there was negligible sludge in the bottom and less wear on the bottom of the selector lever compared to the LNA, suggesting less gear changes/lower miles.

This week I've learnt that not all G-type gearboxes use the same size input shaft seal. An early LNA uses uses a larger seal than the majority of GS/A 'boxes.


In other news I made a tow bar. Cost me about £8 in steel, either steel's cheap in france or the place I used to use in the UK was a rip-off.


Plus a couple of other little bits.



It also incorporates exhaust and fog light brackets, if you're wondering what the bits on either side are.




I used it for towing a bike trailer back to the UK, and it performed faultlessly. Unfortunately the same couldn't be said for the trailer.




It wasn't really what I wanted when heading for the ferry at 4.00am, and was the start of far more stress than I think I deserved, including, but not limited to, a replacement tyre that wouldn't hold air, borrowing bicycle pumps in the queues to get on and off the ferry, and abandoning the trailer in a layby the following day to go looking for an ATS to fit a second replacement tube .

In better news, I replaced a rear wheel bearing. Bought one at Salbris, bearing, seal, and locking ring, under 30Euros, at that price I wasn't going to worry about the quality for too long. The old locking ring came out really easily, it can't possibly have been anywhere near as tight as it should be. The most awkward bit was getting the thread started when putting the new ring in.

Came out really easily. I made a more substantial tool to put the new ring in, torqued up to 'bloody tight', but still don't think it was as tight as haynes recommends.


And as of yesterday there's another 12 months MOT on it.