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Hi Dave,
Glad to read that your clutch problems are resolved.
How did you go though with the gear selection? This is often caused by the stretching of the cable, and may just need a minor adjustment of the length on the lower selector. That itself can be frustrating, as when the adjustment is tightened, it can create a “pinch groove” in the cable, and when trying to take up any stretch, the clamping section can tend to slip back into the previous indentation on the cable.
One other problem can be with the outer cable case. I had was an occasion where the outer cable casing fractured at the chassis post, beneath the nut where the case joins the threaded section. When this occurred, the tendency was for the case to move to the drivers side with the natural tension exerted on it, and this prevented reverse from being selected, as well as making normal gear changing very hard. on the chassis.
I once purchased a spare box, and its cable case had completely worn through at the side of the box, and the case was full of hard set dirt that was mixed with oil, making the movement very stiff. I mentioned this to another owner here, and he said that his case had worn through like this, and he had repaired it by cutting it into two pieces, cleaning it out and then rejoining it with a brass tube connector.
On the same topic, an 83 year old owner who has restored an A90 convertible, happens to be a specialist Borg Warner gearbox technician, and he initially had an adjustment problem. He added a spring to the bottom lever, fitted to the left chassis side, to ensure the lever could be pushed all the way back to the left side when this occurs with gear changing. I also now have this on my car, more as a safe guard than anything.
However, when investigating the problem of gear changing, he found that in the internal selector gate lever that positions the selectors, the spring loaded point in the gear stop plate was not engaging into the indentation on the gate lever, which is the neutral position, which can lead to problems. He has subsequently devised a “fix” for this, which is a much more robust type of spring loaded pin.
Having a spare gate selector, I checked it and did observe that the original spring loaded pin did not engage the divot in it, passing about 1/2mm to the side of it. It is important to have the neutral position selected when setting the adjustment, and this does does that. Without it engaging properly, could also attribute to making adjustments harder to undertake. I would expect that the your column A40 box would be the same.
In my old C/V, when I purchased it, it was fitted with an Austin 16 floor change box, which I undertook over 200,000 miles in, before replacing it with an original A90 column change. On that box, the gear stop plate had no spring loaded pin, and was never fitted with one. I would conclude that at some point, Austin had become aware of a problem, otherwise it would never have been fitted with the spring loaded pin for the neutral position.
Anyway-hope all is well. Cheers-Peter
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