Austin FX4 Gearbox Battle

The gearbox on my Austin FX4 has been the venue for a ding dong battle today. I’ve had it perched on an assortment of jacks, hung from tie downs, strapped from the frame of the car and balanced on re-purposed bits of furniture.

The aim of the exercise is to do what is simply stated in the manual – “assembly is the reverse of disassembly”. Having rudely taken the clutch from its home on the flywheel and inserted a replacement (a step-clutch?), I was hoping the clutch parts would coalesce as a family unit around their new members. To do this, I had to position the clutch slap bang in the middle of the flywheel while tightening six bolts into something that would clamp it in hopefully the right spot. Then I had to maneuver the gearbox up and onto the flywheel, navigating the gear lever turret through a hole in the cab floor.

None of this makes any sense unless you’ve done it, and rather than try to describe it in detail, I’ll give an analogy. It’s like trying to remove Texas from the continental United States, and then push it back in from the sea. Easy on paper until you notice that it is inhibited by Mexico to the South, and the pan-handle to the North. Also, towing the great state of Texas around the Gulf of Mexico is damn hard – it weighs more than France. And to tow Texas while simultaneously prying a large enough gap between Monterey and New Orleans in which to fit it is like fighting a war on two fronts. A heavy metal war armed only with lollipop sticks.

OK, so my gearbox is a little smaller than Texas. It’s just as heavy though, and has to be suspended above my head while I’m punting it around. At one point I was lying underneath it, loosening a strap when it sailed down onto my chest. That’s how I know how heavy it is. About three hours into the pitched battle, I stopped trying to finesse the gearbox splined shaft into the flywheel pilot hole, and just let it have it. Levering with planks of wood, wedging my hands behind it while pushing against the car’s frame with my legs. Sweating, swearing, grunting and losing bits of hand flesh along the way.

I’ve never had to run down a wounded boar and plunge my knife repeatedly into it’s chest in order to feed my family. So if I said that my four hour supine gearbox wrestling ordeal was like trying to hold down an angry stuck pig, that would be mere idle conjecture.

Round two tomorrow. I’m still an inch from where I need to be.