Slick shifting Ninety
ONE of the very many great things about this job is that I get to drive a lot of old Land Rovers. I have now had 34 years’ experience behind the wheel of various examples of Solihull’s finest, so I have a reasonably good idea of how a healthy example of, say, a Series IIA 109 diesel should drive. Many of my customers also have long experience of driving these wonderful old vehicles. I can think of at least two of my regulars who were driving Series station wagons on epic transcontinental expeditions when I was still at playschool. But at the other end of the scale are the people who have just bought their first classic Land Rover. They have grown up with power steering, anti-lock brakes, fuel injection and electric everything, and quite often have never driven anything with a four-speed gearbox and a choke control.
By the time I bought my first Land Rover at the age of 19 I had already owned a Fiat 500 (the proper 1960s rear-engined one, not a rebodied Punto), Morris Minor 1000 and Triumph Herald 13/60, none of which had synchromesh on first gear, servo-assisted brakes or any of the driver aids that we take for granted these days. My Series III Lightweight was actually faster that the Fiat or Moggy and handled better than the Herald, so it wasn’t too much of a culture shock. Only the outrageous fuel consumption took some getting used to. But step out of any 21st century family hatchback into a Series III, or even a Defender 200Tdi, and it is like landing on a different planet. The result is that from time to time a customer brings in a vehicle which is just about undrivable. If you don’t know what to expect from an old Land Rover you can put up with almost any problem in the belief that non-existent brakes, steering with half a turn of free play and a 35 mph top speed are “normal for Land Rover”.
A typical example was the Ninety that I had in a couple of weeks ago. It was a very early example (galvanised body cappings, lift-up door handles and so on), in for some engine work, and when I went to move it I found it was almost impossible to select any gears at all. The gear lever wobbled around in all directions but positive selection was elusive. Eventually I gave up looking for first and settled for third with a bit of clutch slip. “I thought the gear change was a bit rubbish,” said the customer. “I was going to fit a quick shift kit and see if that cured it.”
I thought that before messing around with aftermarket gearshift conversions it might be a good idea to fix the actual gearbox problem first. There were a couple of avenues to explore, the first of which was the gear change bias springs. These are a pair of thick gauge hairpin springs which sit either side of the ball at the base of the gear lever, hidden by a rubber cover. They are intended to centralise the gear lever in the third – fourth plane and are adjusted with stop bolts and lock nuts. They have a secondary function of retaining the ball in its socket to stop the gear lever waggling around. Correct adjustment is critical: if not properly set up they will push the gear lever towards the gaps between the gears in the gate pattern, so that you have to positively guide the lever into each gear instead of relying on the springs to do the hard work for you.
The springs on this vehicle were about as far out of adjustment as it was possible to achieve. I have no idea how the last person to play around with them managed to screw up the settings so comprehensively, then think “that will do” and refit the rubber cover. I eventually managed to get them set up “just so” and could now find all the gears without difficulty but there was still something wrong. The gear lever moved back and forth with almost no resistance, as if there was something loose in the mechanism. At the front of the gear change extension shaft is a ball joint into which the bottom end of the gear lever engages. This is held onto the shaft with a grubscrew which sometimes works loose, but that was not the problem here. I could not remember whether there was another grubscrew at the opposite end of the shaft so I removed the top cover and gear change extension housing to investigate further.
The clearance between the cover and the underside of the seatbox is only just enough to be able to fidget the extension assembly up and forwards. With this out of the way I found that the selector rail inside the gearbox could be slid in and out by hand with no effort which is not normal. I was starting to think that the fault lay inside the gearbox but then I noticed, once again, something which was out of place. On the top of the main gearbox casing, normally hidden underneath the extension housing, is a threaded plug which holds the selector detent ball and spring in place. The plug should be flush with the casing – this one had unscrewed itself until it was only being held in place by the extension housing. I removed and cleaned the plug, applied a dab of Loctite and screwed it back into place. Normal operation restored.
It is always very satisfying to be able to transform the way a vehicle drives with just a bit of straightforward mechanical tinkering. This old Ninety went from having the worst gear change of any Land Rover I have driven to one of the nicest. The owner could not have been more delighted, which is bad luck for sellers of quickshift kits.