Re: 51 manual 3 speed issue

Posted by Ross On 2015/3/21 20:51:48

First gear is non synchro. The thinking was (and is) that if the car was rolling at all, second gear would do just fine and there was no need to shift to first.

As to jumping out of gear, if the usual culprits like linkage adjustment and rotten motor mounts are taken care of, then most likely the mainshaft of the tranny needs attention. That has several gears on it that are mounted on preloaded bearings. The preload is maintained by a swaged-on retaining ring. Violent shifting and other accidents will distort that ring, the preload is lost, the gears wobble on the shaft, and the tranny jumps out of second as you go down hill. If you take the top cover off your trans and can wiggle the second gear from the front--which happens to be second gear-- then you have lost your preload. When the wobble is not too bad, I have reset the preload by merely cold working the retaining ring back firmly into its groove with a punch and hammer. It has been quite OK for the last 40K miles on my 51. Sadly, you have to take the trans completely apart to get to that ring.