A while ago, I threatened to split the cases…

as the next logical step after taking the gearbox apart, I think? Well, it wasn’t quite as easy as that.

That was at least the plan, but it had one slight hitch…

I started by taking all three of the screws out that were holding the cases together, not exactly rocket-science, and decided to drop the drive-side off first. That went fairly easily, anyway without any scarring or swearing.

Until after I had the casing opened, that is! This is what I found:

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Take a closer look, do! (Click on the picture and then again to enlarge…)

Instead of the trusty roller-bearing for the drive-side, there are now two sets of ball-bearings, presumably because of cost? I have no idea…BUT, the casting also appears to have been ‘opened out’ deep enough to take the new bearings (and a steel ring, that looks like a clutch thrust-ring!) with a ‘Dremel’ or similar!

The whole lot was red ‘Loctite’d in position, very secure, I’m sure! Innovative if nothing else. How long the engine ran like this, if at all, is a question that has to be asked!

Anyway, that was bad enough, but the next problem was almost worse; bad enough, anyway, to hold me up for a good week!

The timing side should have then also followed suit straight away, so that I could take the cases to the welder, Sam, to fix up the chipped Lug. No such luck!

The timing cover inside and out were already off, so all that remained was to take off the oil-pump gear and the retaining nut, and the rest should ‘drop’ out. Haha, very funny! The first thing that I found odd was on loosening the retaining nut that holds the oil-pump gear on the crankshaft.

Now, theoretically, this should come off easily and one should require a puller to get the gear off its taper, after which the bevel-gear behind it should just pull off the shaft with a bit of gentle leverage. So much for theory.

I am still a bit confused, but no more that others, perhaps, of my age…The nut (K114/2) came off easily enough, pulling the gear off with it (!), which appeared, if not to be one and the same piece, to have welded themselves together!! Is this a new innovation from one of the later models?? That was EASY! No puller needed, just unscrew and away we go!

All I need do now is to gently lever the bevel-gear off the shaft and I can drop the other crank-shaft half out of its bearing (I thought).

NEVER ASSUME, I have been taught, it’s as deeply ingrained as ‘measure twice, cut once’. The German language has a nice expression that I like very much, something like ‘the devil lies in the detail’ or some-such…Do you think that I could find a way to get the %$#* gear off gently? Not-so-gently? With Brut (sorry!) force and bloody ignorance?

Not a chance! I did get it to ‘wobble’ though! Really! (I thought so, anyway…)

I just had to give up after nearly an hour, coz I didn’t actually want to be left surrounded by the shattered shards of a 70-year-old aluminium-alloy timing-side crank-case half and the gear still proudly hanging on to its chosen habitat!

It took me a week to work up the guile and courage to have another real go at it, and in the end I reigned supreme, the parts parted and the cases unscarred and unblemished. Don’t ask how, I actually can’t say for sure what it was; I CAN say that there was no violence nor Fire/Heat/Corrosives necessary. As inexplicably as it held on, so it came off (albeit after a while…)

AT LAST, Now I could go around to Sam to get the other things repaired, too, namely the front brake-plate (remember?) and the rocker-cover, which was split (I take it that a valve had tried to break out from the inside… claustrophobia, no doubt!)

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There’s the damage and the TIG repair, which is a lot better than it looks in the picture. After filing and fettling, (the job was actually completed in about 10 minutes using a flexible-shaft dentist-drill from the 60’s, but a ‘Dremel’ would have done the job just as well!) it was perfect and only needed drilling through from the ‘good side’ to finish it off.

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The welded cover. Sam said that the alloy was VERY different to the cases, which welded up quickly and cleanly. This piece took him almost a half an hour to get right and even then, didn’t really penetrate or flow through…

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Remember the ‘Webb’ front brake plate? Here it is naked;

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…and welded, for me to finish and get coated again!

Nice Job, Sam, at TigOnWelding, in Kilkenny, Adelaide SA.

You may also remember an Altette horn that was very glossy, but very ‘orrible? The substance was absolutely rust-free under that cruddy repaint job (had NOT been blasted or sanded, either, the metal underneath was ‘virgin’, when I stripped off the paint!). Well, the brackets and such were given to Alan Marshall, the powder-coater, but the body I didn’t want to/couldn’t dismantle any further and it would have been cooked beyond recall in his oven, so I resorted to the dreaded spray-can, which produced a dismal gloss over the cold-galv zink primer, looking like this now; Not great, but still better than before, though!. I think I’ll have the outer ring chromed and see what I can do to make it a bit more like it was, when it left the factory, though. More later?

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Whatever…will report soon on some other good things that have been going on, soon! See Ya!

© peter gouws 2012

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