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Hi guys,
While the whole drivetrain is out of my car, one of my next tasks is going to try and clean up the transmission, and put a new rear seal and what gaskets I can in it. The 1953 manual three speed (no overdrive) trans operated well enough before, but leaked pretty badly from the rear seal so I don't plan on doing bearings or synchros.
I'd like to replace the shifter fork cover gasket, rear seal, and if I can, the gasket between the main and rear housing...
Reading the shop manual, the cover and rear seal should be pretty straight forward, but going any deeper, and I will have to start removing shafts, which sounds like a good thing for me to screw up.
Any advice for a novice transmission man? What is reasonable for a shade tree mechanic, and what not to mess with?
Danke, Mike

Well, spent a day in the garage getting dirty.
So far I only took the cover off of the transmission, and did not find any missing teeth on any gears, which I consider good. The two brass 'fingers' on the front shifter forks are pretty worn though, the rears look good still. Is this a result of the front bearing being loose/sloppy?

OK, the trans had slipped out of high gear a few times on me, but not often. I also found the rear transmission mount was torn, so that will also be ordered soon.
Any help appreciated.

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I'm sure someone else will come along shortly with a lot more experience than I have in these matters, but that brass (or perhaps bronze?) shoe shows more wear than ones I examined just last week. I suspect replacements are available from Kanter's, Max, etc., or if not, they look pretty easy to make from scratch. From again limited experience, it seems typical that the wider shoes show wear faster than the narrower ones (rear?).

From what I read in the shop manual, the front, bigger shifter fork controls 2nd and 3rd (direct drive) gears. The smaller brass/bronze shoes are for R and 1st. Since most miles(kilometers) happen in 2nd or third. I guess it makes sense they are more worn. Slowly the gears in my mind are staring to turn...

While you're examining the cover, take a look for excessive wear on the ball detents - see picture from a post of a few days ago. Move the arms firmly or you can easily overshoot and the steel balls and/or spring can come out and go flying. Easy enough to reinstall, but sometimes not so easy to find where they roll to.

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Here's a pic of my 2-3 shifter fork detents. They do show a little wear, but I don't really know if this is acceptable or not.
I was in the habit of shifting into 2nd just to sync the transmission, and then putting in first gear before driving off. I guess the added use of 2nd could have caused extra wear on the detents? I feel like just replacing the brass shoes might be treating a sympton, but don't know if the cause is these detents or someplace else in the trans....

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