Stanky's Car Fixing Thread - Looming MOTs and a day out 06/06

[Stanky]

As some of you may know, and fewer still may care, the gearbox on the Almera of many miles has been on its way out for some while. At the last MOT it flew through with but 2 advisories for negligible issues however the gearbox was rated officially 'SHIT' and not long for this world.

 

Rather than OMGLOL scrap the fucker, I decided to put out a mayday call to the AS massive and a gearbox was sourced from a fellow member who extremely kindly offered it, and various other bits to keep me motoring for just the cost of postage. To this lump of pure technological wonderment I added the finest clutch kit that Euro Crap Art could offer (at under £35) and 5 litres of liquid dinosaurs with which to fill the gearbox of much promise.

 

At this point, I filled the boot of the almost stricken Almera, which looked something like this

 

 

Due to other commitments, the work couldn't be fitted in for 3 weeks, during which time the Almera was given a strict diet of local, critical missions only, which mostly meant my wife driving it very slowly, in 5th gear to and from work 2 days a week.

 

But tonight, Matthew, I will be SUPER MECHANIC!

 

I knocked off work an hour early, and took the Nissan to my uncle-in-law's workshop, where he and I set to in the quest to change the gearbox. In an evening. Without ramps. And here is the story in all its detail.

 

To begin with. The scene looked like this:

 

 

The picture is blurry because I was excited. As you can see, its an engine bay. The gearbox sounded like a coffee grinder.

 

So we began to detach things. I worked at removing bits at the top, while uncle-in-law set to removing the driveshafts from the hubs. Behold a slightly 'underwater' shot of a driveshaft removed from a hub

 

 

By this point I'd removed the intake gubbinz, battery, detached the clutch cable,battery tray, starter motor, and myriad brackets

 

 

All of these were carefully put in a big pile in the corner for later. Here is a picture of a starter motor

 

 

With all this stuff removed, we had access to the box. At this point I stopped taking pictures for a little while because the gearboxes weigh about 40kg each and they are very hard to move about so we both had to actually do some work. The nearside driveshaft goes through a funny little sandwich plate with a hole in it, so you can't just drop the whole lot out. The nearside driveshaft has to be removed from the box, then you can drop it out the bottom with just the offside one connected. So thats what we did, but not before draining the oil out, and what a lot of black gear oil there was...

 

 

 

Then, the gearbox was separated from the engine

 

 

With the aid of a big breaker bar.

 

With the box on the floor, the other driveshaft could be removed, leaving just a sad box

 

 

 

Next, we had a good look at the drain plug. Which had taken on the festive spirit by decorating itself with all sort of sparkly bits of what is probably input shaft bearing, but really could be almost anything

 

 

And for those whose eyesight is less good

 

 

And that, children, is how chemical metal is made.

 

So, we now had a gearbox-less car. Next, the clutch. This appeared to be the original item, which after 19 years and 141,368 miles was in less than optimal shape.

 

 

 

With these removed, it exposed the SOLID FLYWHEEL YO

 

 

which in this picture looks like it might be made of solid gold. It isn't. But it was on good shape with no scoring or other damage, other than slighly chewed teeth from the starter.

 

So, on with the new clutch kit. A nice LUK job was mine for just £34 from ECP which seemed a right bargain. It even fitted. A-Mazing.

 

 

Next, we had to get the filler plug out of the new gearbox. This was less fun. The plug liked where it lived, and didn't want to come out. Someone had had a go at it some time in the past so it was a bit chewed up, heads were scratched, air tools were tried in vain and so I suggested we heat it up a bit. This worked brilliantly, I stood on the top of the gearbox to stop it escaping, uncle-in law stood on the 1/2" bar and CRACK! it let go. Much back slapping ensued and we all ageed how much better the world is with the invention of fire.

 

The plug was greased and put back in temporarily to allow the box to be re-fitted. This was even less easy than removal. Eventually we succeeded by me jacking the gearbox up from underneath very carefully while UIL guided it onto the dowels and losely did the bolts up. At this point it was beginning to look like the end was in sight.

 

The bolts were done up with the air gun, and I guided the box up to allow the end mount to be done up and made the whole arrangement a lot more secure. Then, UIL got back underneath and began to re-attach the crossmember we had removed earlier and locate the bolts in the front and rear mounts.

 

At this point it looked a bit like this

 

 

By this point I had begun to re-assemble the top of the engine bay. The starter was back in, some of the brackets were back in place and I had begun to re-attach the myriad plugs and things to their relevant sockets. There was some to-ing and fro-ing getting the crossmember back in place, which was eventually achieved with the use of precision jacking, and he then re-attached the driveshafts to the gearbox while I kept putting the topside back together.

 

Here is a re-attached driveshaft in the offside hub

 

 

And the air intake stuff, and battery tray re-attached

 

 

We then fed the new gearbox about 3 litres of 80w mineral gearbox oil which I reckon should be alright as the spec says 75w/90 so its in the middle and was cheaper than genuine Nissan stuff at £8 for 5 litres. It smells horrible and was green, so probably refined stegosaurus rather than t-rex, which everyone knows makes brown oil.

 

Then, it was taken back down off its axle stands, the hub nuts done up, wheelnuts done back up, battery re-fitted, clutch cable re-attached and the engine bay looked like this. Pretty similar to how it started

 

 

Much tension occurred as we started it up, hoping like fuck that the new gearbox wasn't borked, and we'd remembered to plug everything back in properly. I turned the key and it burst into life, and ticked over like a beauty. It no longer sounds like teeth chattering at idle and revs cleanly and near silently through to 3.5k which was as far as I dare take it on the drive home.

 

The whole job took two of us about 5 hours to complete end-to-end, which I think isn't bad considering I'd not done it before and we didn't have any ramps. The Nissan is actually quite nice to work on with plenty of space to get to stuff in the engine bay and care had gone into the assembly in 1996 as almost all the bolts came undone without shearing or being seized which made it quite a straightforward process.

 

This was a massive success and I'm hugely pleased with myself for undertaking this. It wouldn't have been possible without the kind offer of the gearbox from another member on here after my plea for assistance, and without my uncle-in-law to assist, but I definitely contributed to the work and have given the little nissan a new lease of life. Hopefully with these new bits bolted on it'll do another 140k miles and I'll know exactly what to do next time!

 

I hope you have enjoyed this little insight into my life and my vehicle of awesome mechanical resilience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[beko1987]

Bravo! I've never had the balls to go anything gearbox/clutch before,

[320touring]

Top effort chap! Never done a fwd clutch - old bmws are much simpler.

 

here's hoping you get a fair few years oot it!

[hauserplenty]

Eleventy squillion (or so) Autoshite Car-ma points. You made the best use of the time and facility you had, with parts / assistance from a fellow Shiter...plus you drove it home under its own power.

Properz!

[eddyramrod]

Excellent! 

I have to say, when I started seeing photos of re-assembly, I was waiting for the one of a vital part left on the floor, or of re-dismantling in order to find something hidden in the depths.  But no, a tale of smoothness and joy, almost entirely unlike my one experience of changing a clutch (1972 Triumph Toledo, in 1982).

Well done indeed.

[brownnova]

Gr9 effort!!

[doobietoo]

Very disappoint.... wheres all the xtra bits???? good work ..you are a gearbox god...

[steve_earwig]

These 1/2" long breaker bars sound good, where do you buy them? (Damn smart move, imagine doing that when it's on the car...)

[dollywobbler]

Love for the unloved. Excellent.

[oldcars]

Great work. You didn't seem to break anything/hurt yourself so 1000000/10 for that one.

[Asimo]

Nice job, good to start and finish something in one session!

I have never heard of an Almera, therefore have no idea what one looks like. I will resist googling and keep my eyes open!

[steve_earwig]

You might not have heard of them because the Almera's daft ad campaign showed people pushing them over cliffs, I'm not altogether sure what the point of this was but it didn't say much for the cars if people found them so hard to get rid of.

[mercrocker]

Well done! I only know what an Almera looks like because a bloke drove one round our village with a smashed back window for about 5 years....Top spannering, Stanky the Chinese will have to wait a bit longer for some more razor blade feedstock.

[The Moog]

I was waiting for the inevitable we forgot to put x back and had to take it apart again!

 

Top bombing

[Joey spud]

Thats a good price for a luk clutch kit.

I paid that for one of euros transmech kits last year for the SIL's xsara,which worked fine for a few months but now it bites really high and acts more like an on/off switch than a clutch.

 

I still attend the odd Nissan Micra / Almera with a jammed gearbox,the last one was owned by a cat rescue lady and despite her local garage telling her to stop using the car she tried to get to her cat sanctuary one more time when it finally locked up solid outside a school.

 

When these lock up and stop the wheels turning i get the fairy liquid out and lube up my trailer ramps so i can pull them on without over straining the winch motor (get some funny looks squirting the green stuff about though).

 

As long as the timing chains dont stretch and throw up a cam sensor fault code then these cars run forever.

 

Well saved Sir.

[Twiggy]

That was fascinating !  ​

[philibusmo]

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who was waiting for the moment where it was all going to go wrong. I was a bit tense reading the reassembly, trying to work out what disaster was about to happen.

 

But nothing did happen, it went smoothly from start to finish. Top job!

[TataBobu]

We then fed the new gearbox about 3 litres of 80w mineral gearbox oil which I reckon should be alright as the spec says 75w/90 so its in the middle and was cheaper than genuine Nissan stuff at £8 for 5 litres. 

 

 

 

Take a look at the spec sheets for an 75w-90 and an 80w. The one you put in has roughly half the viscosity index of the one you'd need:

 

http://msdspds.castrol.com/bpglis/FusionPDS.nsf/Files/A7361EC321C8B5A180257E37003B6FEF/$File/BPXE-9WSMAK.pdf

 

http://msdspds.castrol.com/bpglis/FusionPDS.nsf/Files/124E797BC3E81CCF80257E2D003004D9/$File/BPXE-9VV9XS.pdf

 

The oil you put in your gearbox will be too thin when the transmission heats-up.

[doobietoo]

That's more like it pics of you draining and refilling the oil please oh and a bonus point for a pic of your face while you are buying the right oil lol

[Stanky]

Right, i'm going to torch the fucker, the OMG SCRAP IT brigade were right and I'm getting a new automatic diesel Peugeot on finance!

[Coprolalia]

What, no burning kittens or outraged nuns?

 

Excellent work, epitomy of Autoshite.

[billyboy406v6]

Top spannering, praise to UiL for doing the dirty underside bits !

[MarvinsMom]

those almeras are a great wee car, if you can keep on top of the rust, and (in the later ones) the renner bits don't destroy themselves.

 

top work sirs, and a great save!

[vulgalour]

Well... that just made my efforts with the Rover and the Citroen look amateurish.

[Uncle Jimmy]

You might not have heard of them because the Almera's daft ad campaign showed people pushing them over cliffs, I'm not altogether sure what the point of this was but it didn't say much for the cars if people found them so hard to get rid of.

Didn't the Almeira ads feature a Thaw/Waterman type combo in a Sweeny type situation?

 

Bloody good work on the gearbox, you get 11/10 and an Autoshite grille badge.

[Eddie Honda]

Didn't the Almeira ads feature a Thaw/Waterman type combo in a Sweeny type situation?

 

The Sweeney

 

 

The Professionals

 

[Bren]

A real man would have filtered the old oil through a pair of 10 denier tights and poured it back in the box, saving spondoolicks.

 

Good work by the way.

[greengartside]

Good work, Sir! I had an R-reg Almera that had done exactly the same thing, it did sound very comical I must admit.

 

I think I chopped it in for a Carina-E GTi - drove it 200 miles to North Wales and expected the guy to scrap it as it had said gearbox issue - much to my surprise it was kept on the road for another 3 years!

[inconsistant]

In one evening?

[omegod]

Mucho respect for completing this in 5 hrs, I did the clutch on wifey's fiesta and was the biggest job i'd attempted. Took best part of a weekend and getting the box back on solo on my back was a nightmare, I got the shaky arms and thought I was gonna get a face full of Getrags finest until it located on the dowel