Out of gear? No, but teh gearbox is out!

The gearbox is finally out. It fought me all the way though, taking no less than 5 hours. That did include a trip to town though to buy new tools.

For some reason manufacturers are constantly coming up with new ways of fastening things together. It was bad enough when we changed from Whitworth, AF and Imperial spanners to new fangled Metric. But at least they were still hexagonal, and the 12mm spanner was useful for ramming onto worn out 1/2" bolts.

But then they started fitting Allen key bolts, then torx and now splined bolts. Hence the need to go into town, because the driveshaft bolts which I thought we T40 torx are actually M12 splined bolts. VW must have been leading that particular arms race back in the early '80's. Why do they do this? Do they seriously think the home mechanic will give up just because they fitted a different type of bolt? We don't we just go and buy the tools, and I suppose that's the point. You either pay VW garage to do it, or buy the tool, and they probably own the tool company.

Anyhow the reason the job took so long was I had to pick up from where I stopped last night with the bolt holding the heater tube bracket and starter motor. To get easy access to this bolt you need to remove the bracket - to remove the bracket you have to undo the bolt. Catch 22. Or you can just about get to the bolt if you remove the two heater hoses which have rusty jubilee clips that need to be carefully cut off with a junior hacksaw. That took time. It also destroyed the heater tube piping which went oval as I twisted to pull the hoses off. It's paper thin, so must have been rusting away from inside during the cars long sabbatical. That's a problem I'll return to in due course.

Removal of the gearbox mount was simple enough, one bolt mounting to the car, and three holding the mount to the gearbox. For some reason the threads on these were incredibly long, meaning a socket wouldn't do, I had to use a cranked spanner to start, easing the bolts about a 16th of a turn at a time until I could get the socket into action. The replacement gearbox has thankfully shorter threads.

Next it was driveshaft removal. VW sensibly have drive shafts that unbolt from the gearbox and you can remove them without leaking all your transmission fluid, unlike a Nissan Micra. They have fitted them with those confounded M12 splined bolts though. There are six per shaft, three pairs linked with a locking plate that prevents them unwinding if they come loose in service. Unfortunately nearly 40 years of close contact meant that only 3 would release on the offside driveshaft whilst 5 let go on the nearside, with the last being persuaded to part after a little tweaking. The three remaining on the offside had worn the splines so the newly acquired tool wouldn't turn them, and neither would mole grips, or a hammer and chisel. I had already released the hub nut on the nearside shaft as this needs replacing due to a split gaitor, so I cracked the other hub nut, reasoning that the shaft would come out with the gearbox and could be separated once I had better access. That just left the rear engine mount to remove. Experience in pulling the replacement box from the donor car told me that you have to unbolt the mount form the car and then remove it from the engine as well because the gearbox is such a tight fit in the engine bay. It gives more room to rotate the gearbox and drop it down with the mount removed. It would have worked too if the driveshaft wasn't still attached. There followed about an hour of turning, twisting stretching, pushing and pulling the gearbox and driveshaft into a variety of different positions, finalised by jacking the car up even higher to gain the angles required to eventually drop the box and shaft. the problem was the driveshaft fits over the exhaust, so it was trapped between that and the chassis, even when free of the hub. I suppose I could have removed the exhaust, but I was trying to keep the job simple.

With both the driveshaft and gearbox out on the garage floor in the cold light of dusk, access was much easier, and an angle grinder made short work of the bolts to separate the two without risk of damaging the shaft which will be cleaned and reinstalled.

So the replacement 'box can now be installed. Replacement is, as the Haynes manuals always say, the reverse of removal. But hopefully easier with the driveshafts separated.