Gearbox Tail Housing Bushes

[Toad of Toad Hall]

Hi All,

Great to see the new board up and running.

Thought I'd share how I rebushed my gearbox tailhousing on my Sud last summer. Hopefully of use to somebody. My buses were very worn and I wanted something a bit firmer without going all the way to solid mounts. I found that BMW E30 roll bar bushes were the right dimensions with a slight modification. I bought some Superflex ones:

http://www.superflex.co.uk/proddetail.p ... 2533%2F18K

and then ground off the excess bush:

Bushes

I left them in the freezer overnight before grinding them down.

All fitted:

Top Bush

Bottom Bush

Bushes Fitted

From memory I had to buy some stainless tube of the right dimension but that was straightforward.

Found it's worked really well. Tail housing still has some flex but nowhere near as mush as it did with the older bushes and the gear change seems a lot more positive. Christine at Superflex was really helpful as well, great service. I also got some other bushes from them to do my steering arms which I'll post in a bit.

Hope you find it useful.

[Johnboy]

Nice mod ! Will have to remember that one

[Kermit]

Surely the rear and front engine mount has more to do with "gearbox movement"

[PETROLHEAD]

Good Mod Toad, always nice to see someone using their Noddle and modifying something for the better, and not at great expense either.

I thinks thats the key thing here.

As Kermit suggests, there are greater weaknesses in our engine and gearbox mount design, allowing for sloppiness overtime, which i'm sure you have or will address also, but at this price and simplicity, it looks a very very worthwhile and well thought out mod.

I shall be doing precisely this is suspect on my own suds/33.

Nice one!

Shrew

[AlfaCorseChris]

BMW E30.... NOTED

[Toad of Toad Hall]

You're definitely right about the other mounts as well but I'd already renewed those. The tail housing ones were completely shot. It does seems to have worked really well with far less movement but still enough to stop vibration.

If I get time this weekend I'll post up how I did the steering arms and steady bar as well.

[Johnboy]

Cool keep the pics coming

[Kermit]

You're definitely right about the other mounts as well but I'd already renewed those. The tail housing ones were completely shot. It does seems to have worked really well with far less movement but still enough to stop vibration.

If I get time this weekend I'll post up how I did the steering arms and steady bar as well.

That would be VERY interesting as I haven't got that far yet

The rear gearbox mount I got from Ebay is very stiff and the mounting to the tunnel is part of the moulding rather than "floating" - Shrew hasn't seen one like it so hopefully will be OK
H