I've seen some bodges in my time but this one...

[John Potter]

I went to recondition my very floppy gearchange the other day, armed with a couple of boxes of bits from the ususal Holmfirth vendors of good bits.

Having disconected & dropped the gearchange rod off the bits under the van I realised why I couldnt quite sort out the gearchange....

Gear lever -small.jpg

As you can just about see someone had decided to tighten up the gearchange by firmly anchoring the lever to the arm. Unfortunately they had done this by cutting a slot in the end of the steel rod and the aluminium lever, put a wedge into the slot and then (tried) to weld the lot togetherwith obvious results.....

Guess what, it didn't work - lots of melted aluminium and blobs of steel that just about stopped the shaft coming off the rod but left it free to wobble.

Lots of grinding & filing later I managed to free the selector arm from shaft and cleaned it all up.

I replaced the worn out roll pin with a bolt, then another bolt vertically through the inside of the cup, drill through the shaft and and out to the base of the shaft.

Not perfect, new bits on order...

[sandwedge]

Nice bit of carpentry there looks like some of the hammers Ive repaired in the past

[syncropaddy]

Just think, the same guy might have repaired the brakes at some stage or even passed on some 'sound advice' to someone on here ...... !!