General: 140: 140 gearbox swap woes

[Sam Barker]

Hello everyone, check this out.
I recently took apart a goosed but low mileage '72 144 for it's engine and gearbox (B20 fueley and O/D). Seeing as the water pump on my engine was leaking I used this as the rather thin excuse for a swap.

The engine and gearbox and O/D went in fine, but the propshaft, what a pain, the splines were different so I had to use all the "new" propshaft, the diff. flange was different so I had to swap the flanges over on the two diffs.

Thinking all was well I went to fasten up the centre bearing and no-go! The rubber bushing that holds the bearing is huge in comparison, and so the transmission tunnel is too narrow for it.

So I'm left with two choices: Get an early "narrow" (Amazon?) bearing bush and stretch it over the bearing and ram the whole lot in and accept that it may be a bit noisier. Or (what I've done so far) is cut the outer portion of the wider bush off and jam it in so it's located by the three ruber "spokes" and gobboe the rest up with Sikaflex (which is great, a bit like silicon sealant) to make a bit more of a carrier.

So anyone got any cleverer ideas, or suffered this fate? By the way, I'm pretty skint so no Prop chopping stylee for me! Ultimately I want to have something good enough to hold up to Classic Rally and Track stress.

Cheers all!

Sam

[classicswede]

Hi Sam,
what year is your 140?

[Sam Barker]

Hello Matey,
Mine is a 1968 (registered in Jan) 144s, the one I took apart was a 1972 GLT or summat. I happened to be in Sweden last week and after a few grillings it turns out the fuel injected cars do run fatter propshafts and so bigger rubber carriers. I'm going to use an earlier new carrier/bush thingy and see how it lasts.

Sam

[classicswede]

Ok so the car will be a 67 short wheel base then. I think these may have a very odd prop - cant remember for sure.
The late 140 injections had a bigger prop - same as early 240's
BTW the 140 injection models were GL's

[Sam Barker]

Yep,
That's the stuff, GL you say? I agree, there were no badges on it but it did have leather seats. I'm going to have it running in the next evening or so and we'll see how the centre bearing carrier likes it!
I checked the lengths of the last part of the props and they are the same flange to flange, and the front part is obviously different due to one being an overdrive box and the other not.

Phew, I'll let you know how it behaves, I'm rallying it on Sunday so it'll get a good work out!

Cheers,
Sam

[classicswede]

I hope you get it all ready for the rally - Have fun

[Sam Barker]

Well, got the engine running Thursday night, sounded like the water pump bearings had gone (the water pump on the old engine was my excuse to swap engines!). So a quick bit of buying and all was set for Saturday morning, new water pump, and no charging, alternator swapped with old one and things are good. Connect propshaft up again and no clearance on the hacksawed bush, so option two: Use angry strength to get the smaller Amazon bush over the larger bearing. Now this does work, you need to summon up all your angry strength "BY THE EYE OF THUNDERA, I HAVE THE POWER" and so on, and it works. Propshaft back under and it catches the transmission tunnel, so a bit of hammering and light angle grinding it sounds good. ish.....

9.00pm, my wife is close to leaving me as I just go for a razz round the block.

Sunday dawns at 5.00am, spark the motor up and head for Durham, 155 miles away, on an engine that I'd only heard running for 10 minutes total, by my reckoning I'll have half hour to spare if it breaks down!

JOB'S A GOOD un

Drove there, rallied all day, drove home, a total trip of 450 odd miles, with 21 special stages and two regularities. Boiled slightly and the timing is off.

So, success, I still need to change the oil, sort out the timing and set the carbs up, the overdrive works off a spare fan switch on the geastick and the propshaft rubs on tight right hand bends. The final drive in the diff isn't ideal, I should swap the rear axles over at some point to get a lower geared final drive.

So things to bear in mind with the Gearbox/overdrive swap:

Leave plenty of time
Do not enter rallies with your car not running
Not all propshafts are the same
Not all 140s are the same
You can get the early bushing onto the later propshaft
The later propshaft will foul the early transmission tunnel
So to the list of items you need we have:

Overdrive unit (with Gearbox preferably)
Gearbox Crossmember
O/D switch (not entirely necessary)
Propshaft (maybe all flanges back to the diff)
Diff may need changing
Transmission tunnel if you have an early car.
Hammer
Swearwords
Superheros to call upon

Well I hope all the above is of use to someone else, I think next time round I'll buy the car with overdrive and get it MOTed rather than stripping that one down, it would have been less work for sure!

[classicswede]

Then glad it all went well ish. I've done the same knid of thing - just drop an engine in then off for a long drive.
You should pop down my way one weekend or something for a look round and a bit volvo chat.

[Sam Barker]

Howdy Classic Swede,
Next time I'm close I'll give you a shout, just got the results back....
26th out of 36!! Which sounds better than it is, seven cars broken/retired, still pleased nothing fell off it and I'm the biggest car by far.

Now to wire a megasquirt ECU and get it fueleyed as a winter project. Next thing to attempt with an unsuitable car is a couple of track sessions, went to the Nurburgring in an Alfa this year, got to go back this year and fancy using the 140 to really wind up the Beemers and porkers!