FRANK ELSON

Talking Frankly

The phone rang, it was Pat. “I’ve met this bloke who has a Series III with a broken gearbox, I told him you could fix it.”

Erm... You know that piece of string you have in your kitchen drawer? The one that wraps itself around the scissors and the corkscrew when you want them? How long is it?

Yes, I like to work on gearboxes, but I’d very much preferred to have been the one that looked at it rather than fixed it.

Anyway, I duly went off with Pat to have a look at the offending gearbox, owned by Len, by the way.

It turned out the gearbox was still inside the vehicle. As in still attached to the engine. And the vehicle was rusty, tatty and covered in mud. I’m really getting too old for this...

Fortunately Pat had brought along his engine hoist, and I had grabbed a couple of my tool boxes before we set off. We were committed by this stage.

First problem. I opened the door and, can you guess? Yep, someone had bolted seats from a long-forgotten saloon car into the Land Rover. Obviously the nuts and bolts are long-ago seized solid, oh and there’s a cubby box in the middle.

Next, I lifted the mud-encrusted mats. The floor and tunnel fasteners were – you’re not going to believe this, or maybe you will – either rusted in or sporting knackered heads. Fantastic.

So that was a nice two- day work-out for my various multi-tools and angle grinder, because good old Len hasn’t got anything like an even reasonable set of working implements.

Still, it was nice to watch his face when I brought out the lump hammer and cold chisel!

I did make Len get underneath to open the drains for the gearbox and transfer box so they were bone dry after two days. I also made him put a jack and block of wood under the flywheel to take the weight of the engine (not before showing him where and explaining why) before we undid the bell housing bolts. These, were of, course, encrusted with mud and old oil, as were the propshaft bolts.

Using the engine hoist – oh, how good it is to use one of these instead of the wooden post that most of us started off with – and a bit of j-j-jiggling Granville (a reference from the TV comedy series Open All Hours for those of you less than 30 years old), out popped one complete gearbox assembly.

And that’s it for now. I had removed the handbrake drum, propshaft flange and brake shoes (these look reusable) too, but I’m still to take my power washer over to Len’s to clean up the gearbox case.

When it is nice and clean we’ll bring it over to my workshop where I can put it on the bench and strip it down to, hopefully, find out what’s wrong with it and repair it.

The weather has been fair clemmed (a colloquialism for very cold) here in Lancashire for a while, which didn’t make working outside on Len’s motor any more fun.

It reminded me of those days in the past when we were forced to work on our vehicles out of doors in snow and ice. In fact, it made me think of one particular time with my old One Ten, PKV, that some of you might remember.

A 1983 model, painted pale blue, she had County stickers all down the sides. As I intended to paint her I had to get these stickers off and, as we all know, the weapon of choice here is a heat gun. Warm the stickers up and peel them off. And that’s exactly what I did one freezing cold November day.

Job done, when I went inside to get clean it had been so cold I couldn’t feel my hands. This meant that when I had caught the side of one hand with the hot tip of the heat gun I hadn’t known about it... until I washed my hands in hot water, that is.

And then there was the time when the water supply to our caravan froze solid on one of the first hill rally events I attended. I went outside to warm it up so Marj and I could have our early morning brew. It was all going well – if a bit uncomfortably cold – when I became aware of our friends, Bill and Dennis, watching me from their caravan window, both holding steaming mugs of coffee. Mates, huh?

Still, it wasn’t quite as bad as when we were driving home from the Newhaven ferry port on the south coast after it had been snowing heavily for three or four days. Although all the main roads were clear, snow was piled up at the roadsides. The entry to my drive was a left turn into a lane, then a sharp right almost immediately, hidden by a hedge. That was the first time my Rangie got airborne, as I drove up a three-foot high solid lump of frozen snow... Needless to say we all survived at least!

“The vehicle was rusty, tatty and covered in mud. I’m really getting too old for this...”