Building a gearbox in Ulaangom

Let’s start with a confession. I am girl who can only drive an automatic car. I can count on one hand the number of times I have been behind the wheel of a manual car, some of these experiences slightly more successful than others. So it’s no surprise that when I can barely change gears that I know virtually nothing about how a gearbox works. Re-phrase that – I knew nothing about how a gearbox works. I now know more than I ever thought was possible or necessary. Likewise, Hayden has entered the realm of gearbox knowledge with an astounding thud! We have been thrown into a world once so complicated it was simply left to the experts, just as one would leave brain surgery only to the most qualified of surgeons. I do not wish to bore you with technical jargon, but I will share the how and why of our newfound expertise in the once impenetrable gearbox domain.
Land Rover gearboxes have been around for many, many years and is therefore easy to understand that over time they have changed and improved in order to hold up power and weight (quite obvious, right?). Let’s now call these gearboxes by their ‘suffix’. We start at ‘A’, after which came ‘B’, which was then followed by ‘C’, etc, etc. I’m trying to keep it basic, but if you have taken a keen interest here is some more info http://www.expeditionlandrover.info/gearboxes.htm.

Let me take a paragraph from this website:

There were changes made to the SIII gearbox during its 14 years of manufacture, mostly to make them less prone to wear and to keep them from jumping out of gear. The suffix D and later Series III gearboxes have a one piece layshaft and are considered to be the most robust of all the Series Land Rover gearboxes. Other principal changes were to the reverse idler gear, bearing and shaft and the syncro units.

So far so good. I hope your keeping up.

Maggie did have a late Series 3 gearbox, but due to the fact that we were to drive this Land Rover across the world (which isn’t as silly as it sounds considering these vehicles were designed to be worldwide expedition vehicles), we thought it best to take no chances and have it replaced. We paid quite a sum of money for a Suffix D gearbox (for reasons mentioned above) with a full six month warranty. The new gearbox was supplied from City Gearboxes Coventry and came fully stamped with a D.

The next part of the story saw us leave the shores of England to take on the world until we found ourselves in the Mongolian swamp. Now, you have probably read about Hayden taking out the gearbox, pulling it apart, assessing the damage, blah blah blah. Let me fill in the blanks here. Upon discovering the damage we phoned the company that sold us the gearbox who in turn passed on the phone number of City Gearboxes as they had built the box. The reason for this being, who else would have a in depth knowledge and a record of this particular gearbox? No one. Just them. Initially they were helpful – ‘yes, email plenty of pictures, we’ll look into it’. It turns out that the emails only go to the boss’s phone (who just happened to be away). A few days later we manage to speak to the boss who rather rudely informed us that our warranty was null and void as we have left the country (therefore ‘abusing’ the gearbox) and that they are not a parts supplier. We gave him the honest and simple explanation that we need your help (Russian visas nearing expiration and no way of obtaining extensions or new ones) as you have the inside knowledge of this particular gearbox and in the end he agreed to help. So many photos were sent and we followed all their instructions to a tee – what’s the serial number printed here, how many teeth are on the layshaft, so on and so forth. We kept our cool, even when being told that the boss wasn’t looking into our situation but instead meeting with a new client (I’m not sure what part of ‘help, we are stuck in Mongolia’ he didn’t understand). Eventually, four days after we began our plea, a courier had been arranged and we had paid for our parts (it’s amazing how quickly people will respond to your email when money is involved).

Fast forward a week and we are in the garage ready to put our Suffix D gearbox back together. A day was painstakingly spent pouring over both manuals and scouring the Internet for helpful advice and tips. At about 6pm the awful realisation came that we had the wrong layshaft. On close inspection there was a clear difference with the teeth on first gear – the new one had 14, our old one had 16. Due to the fact it was the weekend and no explanation from City Gearboxes could be given until Monday we turned to our old friend the Internet to try and figure out what was going on.
In brief summary, we have a D very clearly stamped on our layshaft, we sent this picture when ordering a D (asking City Gearboxes to check it out), we received an unstamped layshaft in a package with a C on it with a different number of teeth (as already mentioned). Fairly simple conclusion you might think. Throw now into the mix that a C and a D layshaft are the same (the only slight difference is the tampering of the metal). So, if they are the same we still couldn’t figure out why the hell the two we had were so clearly different!
Drum roll please….we actually have a Suffix B gearbox! We needed to be sent a B layshaft. How is it even possible that a (supposedly) reputable company can put together a gearbox, complete with Ds stamped all over it, and when required to send parts for their own gearbox, do not have a record of what was in there? Even after asking us for the serial number stamped on the top so that they could ‘look into their records’They admitted fault but totally played on the fact that we needed the new part. If only they had a small skill called ‘customer service’ then our emails and photos would have been more closely looked at and we would not have found ourselves forking out more money for postage and spending another week (if not more) in Ulaangom.
Of course now we also have to face the fact that we believed we had a stronger more durable gearbox, when in actual fact we have one deemed to be slightly weaker and can only bear whatever cross may come with that.

(More pics and detailed mechanic wrap up to come…)