Hi all,

After having had the not-so-rare leaky speedo cable....

The other day the Fun just stopped dead in the outside lane of the M26. Fortunately I was only doing about 10mph at the time, but the guy behind still must have swallowed his teeth. Having the truck recovered to my tame garage (none of that sucking air through the teeth crap) the gearbox has been taken apart to find that 4th and 5th were basically stripped as the gear oil has happily boiled up and forced its way up through the cable despite being topped up only a couple of weeks ago. Apparently the internal breather had collapsed which is what forces the oil up and out through the back of the speedo.

Moral of the story: if you have no breather on the gearbox and you find you have funny smelling oil inside your Felicia, maybe it's time to get the gearbox looked at before something nasty happens.

Alex

i've got a 1.6 gearbox here if you need it

Same happened to me on the M6. Total gearbox seizure.

Moral is clean out the breather bif possible. It is an awkward little bugger to get at under the clutch actuation lever. If no breather then drillout and tap a small hole. Get a length of threaded tube . Screw in and the fir a breather pipe with a small catch bottle on end if poss. Keep the breather pipe high to avoid and oil running downwards.

Simples.

I changed my gearbox but not before clearing out the breather pipe. Result smooth gearchange, no oil loss and new clutch kit into the bargain!

Cheers,

Outlaw.

i've got a 1.6 gearbox here if you need it

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the offer, however the gearbox dude had another one that had something different wrong with it, so he's making 1 good one out of 2 duff ones. Although, if that fails I'll keep your offer in mind. :-)

Also passed on Outlaw's suggestion about installing an external breather tube, hopefully that will get done too. :-)

Cheers

Alex