Gearbox guru needed

[Dave Herrod]

Steadily working through putting my car back together after too many years in pieces. It has a 2500 saloon j type gearbox mated to an overdrive that was re built and upgraded to TR spec by Overdrive Repair Services when I first bought the car. When I had a look in the top of the gearbox before sorting out the cross shaft etc. I discovered that some of the gears had rust putting on them. No problem, I thought, as I had acquired a spare gearbox somewhere along the way which looks in good fettle. So, overdrive swapped over, cross shaft re- bushed and ready to go......

....until I removed the magnetic plug and found a small woodruff key sticking to it. Now, I have looked at every diagram I can find of gearbox internals and can't find any reference to a woodruff key. The key is about 10 mm in diameter and perhaps 1.5mm thick. Can anyone shed any light on where in the gearbox it might have originated? It is, I suppose, possible that it fell in from somewhere else as there was no top cover when I bought the spare box.

As usual, all thoughts gratefully received.

 

Cheers, Dave

[GT6M]

only spot a key is fitted is on the OD oil pump plunger cam.

its ont mainshaft,

 

M

[Dave Herrod]

Thank you very much for your reply- spot on!

I will take the overdrive off again tomorrow and see what's what.

Cheers

Dave

[Dave Herrod]

Well, that was an odd one.

I took the overdrive off again an confirmed that the key for the pump cam was still in place. The key I found attached to the magnetic drain plug was definitely the same size, but appeared to be brand new. No witness or wear marks at all. I wonder whether it could have been dropped in a long time ago and only found its way to the plug after I had been moving the gearbox around?

Anyway, I somehow feel that I've had a lucky escape.

D.