Gearbox progress

Another day and another step forward. Got the broken gearbox out of the car today. Referred to the workshop manual frequently and working carefully and methodically I quickly got to a point where the manual was of no use whatsoever.

Eventually with the judicious application of a few expletives and a little bit of brute force I managed to free the gearbox from its entanglement. In the end I used a block and tackle tied to the towbar and to the back of the gearbox to winch the gearbox backwards far enough so it was free from the engine, at which point I knocked the jack out from under it and let the whole lot crash down onto the wooden planks I had put there for that purpose.

Job done without damage to self or car. Satisfied and feeling I earned my peanuts this evening. Tomorrow comes the altogether much more difficult task of putting the reconditioned gearbox in. Alignment is somewhat more critical and a softer more deliberate approach is called for. Not sure yet how I'm going to lift 80 kg of gearbox into exactly the right place and then slide the whole lot forward into the engine but somehow I will do it.

While I was under the car and had access to the clutch I checked that and, thankfully, that looks to be in excellent condition.

At least that year studying automotive engineering at the ATS in Apeldoorn wasn't entirely wasted (grateful thanks to parents).

The easy bit is done

In the ongoing gearbox saga I've made some good progress with the easy bits so far. I found a recently reconditioned gearbox to swap into the 4WD and have just picked it up.

It does, of course, weigh much more than I can safely lift on my own so I used the small crane I have for my tractor to get it out of the car.

If nothing more urgent comes up I'll start taking the broken gearbox out on Tuesday and, all going well, I'll have swapped the other one in by Friday.

The forecast for the rest of this week is permanently black oily hands, possibly clearing on Friday.

Wellington Folk Festival 2009

Another wonderful festival this year with great music, great guests and great friends. Every year it seems that the Wellington festival gets better. This year there was even someone who sang a song in Dutch. It was just lovely catching up with friends we hadn't seen since last year. I'm already looking forward to the 2010 festival.

We had decided to take the elwinfarm organics shop to the festival and Jenny had bought in a whole lot of special supplies that we expected would be in demand at the festival. In the weeks leading up to the festival I was busy making wood turnings to sell at the festival, among them my enlarged version of the seedling pot makers, of which I sold a good number. Another good item were the spurtles. I had planned to have a couple of new instruments ready for sale at the festival but farm work had to come before finishing them so I only had the dulcimer there I had finished some time before.

A few days before the festival our Nissan 4WD, which we use to tow our trailer, blew the gearbox so we were rather stuck and were looking seriously at having to cancel going to the festival. Thankfully we have some very good, and very generous, friends who let us use their Toyota Hilux over the weekend. What a life saver that was!! A huge vote of thanks to Fred and Shirley. Of course now I'm looking at having to spend the next two weeks under the car to fix it because I'm not about to spend over $2000 to pay someone to fix it for me. The joys of owning an older vehicle with nearly 300.000 km on the clock! At least up to this point we haven't had any major problems with it and, hopefully, once I've fixed the gearbox we won't have any other problems.