Club 80-90 Forums

I have a 1983 1.6D engined van with a gearbox that jumps out of 4 gear I can get hold of a 4 speed box with the same gear ratios as the one I have but its a cable petrol box and I have a hydraulic clutch box and a diesel, what is involved in swapping the bell housings over and does the clutch assembly swap over with the bell housing. I am a competent engineer but have not attempted this before and am looking for some advice.

I guess your gearbox is a 6D or a DY
1,6l Diesel.. made from 10.82 - 2,84...3,78 1st....2,06 2nd...1,26 3rd... 0,85... 5,86( Final drive )

I can't see a petrol gearbox similar to that, what's more are petrol bell housings able to fit Diesel?

The box I can get hold of is a DH and Im told its just a matter of swapping over the bell housing from my diesel box to the petrol one

DH
3,78 1st..2,06 2nd...1,26 3rd... 0,852 4th... 5,428 final drive

not the same

The bellhousing swap is quite straightforward, I did that on a DH box for the first time last week. You will need your old diesel input shaft as well. To swap over the shaft you will need a pair of straight nosed circlip pliers for external circlips. The circlip is so far inside the works that you can't do it with any old pair. Swapping the shafts is a bit fiddly. Firstly it is quite awkward to slide the coupler/reverse pinion far enough forward to enable the petrol input shaft to unscrew. You have to rotate the crown wheel to exactly the right place, and then you have to be SURE that the new diesel shaft (287mm long) is screwed right up tight to the shaft in the gearbox and then back it off about one spline, (so that the clutch end is free to wobble a few mm up and down) BEFORE you slip the coupler/reverse gear pinion back over the splines. You'll either need a new gasket, or very carefully separate the bellhousing from the gearbox to preserve the old one. Oh, and while you're about it you should change the input shaft seal on your new bellhousing. So much easier to knock the old one out with the bellhousing off.

Incidentally, once I had removed the input shaft from my DH box, I was most surprised to find it was exactly the same as my new diesel shaft, so I needn't have bothered. I would have thought it would have been the longer petrol one. Wierd! Or am I missing something?

The gearchange mechanism is different, so you'll need an air cooled rear section of the gearchange, or make up something yourself. I haven't got round to that bit yet, so I can't offer any more info.

Sorry about the repeat posting. I got an error message for the first one so I did it again.

Thanks for all the great information