Loose change | integralingham.com

Loose change!

This is about a gearbox, it belongs to an Evo1, the gearchange on this car has no detent, or spring to help with gear changes,

so gears have to be selected with care.

In the past I've had the gear lever and linkage out to rebush it, I've put a new polybush on the end that attaches to the engine, but the detent is still weak. When buying the parts from Tanc quite a long time ago, I asked him if these items would fix the problem, and he said they probably wouldn't and the fault would be the detent spring.

Tanc is usually correct, so with the engine now out of the car for a rebuild,

it's time to fix this gearbox problem.

Our lovely helpful Hilux

I pulled out the driver side drive shaft with a pry bar to separate the engine and gearbox, I undid the lubrication pipe and drained the gearbox oil, removed the starter motor and lower support brackets, then undid the big bolts.

I left the final drive casing in place and lifted the gearbox off supported with my engine crane. It's a big old lump and is easy to drop, which you don't want! The final drive had been sealed on with the proper expensive Loctite goo and was oil tight, so I would let the gearbox man remove it if he needed to. The engine has now gone away for rebuilding.

The Lancia Delta gearbox is strong, the whole drivetrain of our cars is well engineered, and durable with the kind of motoring the cars now enjoy. It is a Fiat gearbox though, and shares some of the problems with the same gearbox design used in other Fiat vehicles.

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I had been recommended to visit APF Gears in our town for this repair, so I loaded the box onto the Hilux. After filming a short Youtube lecture on the Hilux tailgate,

I drove to APF's yard.

The guys were very helpful, Andy pressed our detent spring down, and showed me that it was working ok, he then explained that a small amount of wear on the top gearbox bushes will mean a big amount of play at the top of the gear-lever. APF also had a Fiat Ducato in for repair because the driver's knuckle was hitting the van's dashboard when he changed gear, the Ducato has a Fiat gearbox using a similar change system to the Delta. By multiplying the bush's slack through the linkage and leverage, the Fiat Ducato gear-lever was floppy at its top end. For the same reason our Delta gear lever was moving across the gate before the spring-back was reached.

So the answer was to remove the 2 old bushes and fit new ones.

The worn bushes are circled,

the actual detent spring is underneath the shaft going down

into the gearbox, inside.

So Andy took the gearbox in and pressed out the old bushings, he'll get 2 new bushes machined.

Andy got right on with the job, and sent pictures of the progress as he promised. He stripped the box down to check on the internals, and it looks pretty good.

These are the two bushes, APF will get new ones machined, one has a ridge to locate the rubber boot on.

I've left the box with Andy, I'll continue the article when

I pick the gearbox up again.

APF know their gearboxes!

Click logo to visit their site.