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Rootes overdrive gearbox

Posted: Sun May 10, 2020 12:12 pm
by styleruk
So I'm swapping out my gearbox in Mrs Ings (1965 Singer Gazelle), for an overdrive gearbox I acquired but know nothing about it's history.
First thing I did was remove a ton of what seemed like underseal. Some was red in colour some black. It still needs a lot of cleaning but before that I thought I'd check a few things out in case it was a lemon.
So I mounted it in a vice, cleaned it a bit more and popped the top cover off, rotated the shaft in all the gears and looked for chips. I could not find anything that looked wrong to me. As for the overdrive, I left that well alone.
Then I decided to fill it with clean oil, then make up an attachment on the end to spin it up with my drill. It spun up nice with no noises in all gears, but I know it's not a great way of testing. I was thinking of rigging something up to spin it up faster with an electric motor, then I perhaps could engage the overdrive to make sure that works, but I thought, it's probably easier to fit it to the car and try it eventually.
I then thought I'd see if the little (can't think of word), sensor on the side that closes an electrical circuit when in 3rd or 4th and allows the solenoid to kick in. So I put continuity across the two connectors and moved from 1st/2nd to 3rd/4th...nothing. hmmm. I would have thought this action would close a circuit.
Does anyone know why this did not?
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Re: Rootes overdrive gearbox

Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 9:36 am
by jpsh120
Is it a laycock type d/type j overdrive?

You should be able to find a service manual for it online and some clues to any fault diagnosis