It's been quite some time since I last worked one of these and by the looks of it they might be coming in full steam again!
Jokes aside these big beastly machines are sometimes a headache to work on and the reason for that is that they are old so when one thing is fixed the next will break because of the extreme performance the new parts give. It's somewhat weird actually.
This was a fairly easy one, for now though. All we had to do for the day was to fit a new clutch and then fit the rebuilt transmission. They have sent the vehicle in for repairs at some other workshop and they rebuilt the motor and the transmission but they messed up horribly. When they rebuilt the transmission they swapped the fourth and fifth gears with each other and this means that when ever you want to select fourth gear you need to select it at 5 on the gear lever and vica versa for the fifth gear.
Hella messed up, I wonder what they told the police when they came to fetch the vehicle?
"Uhhhhh, So you'll notice that the fifth gear and fourth gears have swapped places, so you drive like this now!"
Can you imagine?!
Don't mind everything that is strewn about at this point we were already busy with it and it was already a mess, these things tend to have that effect so whenever I'm done using a tool I put it back or anything in general, if I opened up a box and it needed to be thrown away I did it straight away because after an hour of work up and down in and out things really get messy!
And when things get messy it can turn into a shit show real fast, that and your morale takes a knock! It isn't any fun working in a dirty area!
Anyways, let's see if we can get her purring again!
Well, this is going to be some muscle exercise!
Before we can really go on doing anything at all we need to fit the Fly-wheel and Clutch first, imagine fitting the transmission and forgetting that! (Oh, side note. I never checked if the release bearing was fitted onto the transmission and when it was already against the motor when I realized this. Luckily my old man had my back!)
Would you believe me if I said that the pressure plate of the Clutch weighs more than the Fly-wheel or well it does feel like it, I don't actually think it weighs more though.
That's not the only challenge though, there was also the problem of fitting those heavy pieces of metal! Ahhhh who am I kidding I'm a man I can do this no problem!
Now since the other shop already worked on this vehicle mostly everything is fitted new, which is somewhat of a surprise hey.
Although bossman said we fit our own new parts because frankly I don't want to remove this transmission again just for a simple bearing pull!
Now what is odd with this one is that the bearing was somewhat loose and for a pilot bearing, well I've never seen that! I managed to pull it this far out with my fingers and then I got the puller just to get it out, but I barely touched the puller and it came crashing down!
I'm glad because I thought, nah damn this is going to be one hell of a big struggle to get it out! Turns out not!
Here comes the heavy lifting!
I've fitted quite a few of these in my time but this one somewhat broke me, not in a physical sense but more in a mental sense. When I fitted the Fly-wheel to the crank I had to find the correct sequence of holes, they need to line up.
Now lining that heavy disc up isn't that big of a problem, you just had to keep it there. But the keeping it there wasn't the problem, the problem was that when I pushed it against the crank it bit down and I couldn't get it to turn and no matter what I tried nothing would work!
I thought I'll be stuck here the whole day!
Gladly, this wasn't the case!
Now the time has finally come for this ironically small transmission to be fitted back into that gigantic piece of metal.
That was one thing that I couldn't wrap my head around when I started with this job. It was the fact that gears were so much smaller than I thought it would be at first and it blew my mind how those small fragile things can take such high load and torque and it can really take a lot of punishment!
Transmissions are underrated!
Take this one for example, this thing needs to pull eight tons and that's not including a full diesel tank and eight men fully equipped with gear!
Hectic shit!
I think this sums up how small it is!
Now don't for one moment think that this small thing doesn't weigh that much! It does and the gears inside are real chunky stuff!
Okay so you want to ask why is the top of the transmission still open? Well the answer is very simple and that is because it has a huge tower that is fitted on top of it and you've got to remove it before you can remove the transmission! The same with fitting it back in.
It's a hassle and one that I ain't very fond of.
So we're more than half way done with what needs to be done on this vehicle!
I have to say that these are one of the easiest transmissions to fit out there!
Well you might ask why the transmission is a two tone thing, well we bought one out from a scrapyard because the availability on parts with these are beyond scarce. We can import them from America but what would that not cost!
We decided that we're not going to rebuild the old transmission because we had no idea what more problems they might have added in the rebuild when they were busy with it!
At the end of the day we have a whole transmission for spares, so it's not really a loss.
Now that the transmission is fitted back it was time to add The Tower. Now it's not actually a tower but we refer to it as such. It's nothing more than a fancy name for the gear selector shafts.
Before I can fit it back I need to make sure that all the indents are still inside the transmission and they were, thankfully! I would have slightly crapped myself if they weren't because I left it open during the night, last night. Then I had to add some silicone sealant and somehow wiggle that huge tower into place without smudging all of the sealant off! We do need it to seal off right!
I had to wiggle it in there and then I had to select the forks without actually seeing where the shaft goes and on top of that I had to make sure all those small parts didn't jump out of place._
The previous "Nyala" we worked on we had to fit new air pipes into the whole vehicle, meaning pull out all the old ones and fit some new pipe in! This was a real mission to say the least! We spent three days on that because as soon as the new pipes were fitted and the pressure built up some old pipe somewhere popped again!
Now since we've done such a great job with that vehicle they decided to start sending them to us for those problems. That was all they needed to be in a top notch condition! Remember everything on this vehicle works with air and without the air it won't even move because it needs air to release the brakes.
Now this will be the starting point for the work on the morrow! Fixing those air leaks! I'm actually quite excited for it!
Take note this is not a how to guide, merely myself talking about the work I do and my thoughts around certain things.
To everyone who made it this far into my post Thank you for the read and the support.
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Most of all please leave a input in the comments below, whether is good or bad critic I would like to know, whether its your opinion or your way of doing things in a different manner I would like.
Connecting the people of #HIVE across South Africa. #hive
