Doug asks:
>If you are so bitter towards BL, why don't you get rid of your BL
>product? ;)
I don't own a BL product :-) I answer smugly.. Mine came from British Motors!
(pre-merger)
Sorry you missed my point, and I forgot my wink symbol. The trashing of BL is
a Scott Fisher tradition which I have happily picked up as a shared habit. BL
was the company, after all, that dumped development of the MGs,ran off Donald
Healey and the AH marque, gave us the Austin Marina, the flawed and poorly
assembled TR7 (no insults intended, and someday I hope to own a TR8, but,
really now!) kept the MGBV8 off the American market to preserve the market
(?) for the Stag, and finally buried, through ignorance, negliglence and
sheer stupidity, almost all of the marques that we on the list hold dear. So,
it's not bitterness as much as objective truth telling when I trash a policy
implemented by British (phlegm-sucking) Leyland. (thanks, Scott, for the
memorable title-hyphenator)
As for the weight of oil in the overdrive, I stand by my original premise. BL
and Haynes have screwed up on this one big time. Laycock made the O.D., so
listen to them, not BL (or Haynes, they are only guilty of listening to BL on
this one)
Laycock says, for ALL of their LBC overdrives, to use motor weight oil, in
the 30-50W range. (20w50 is the cure here)
In spite of the fact that yes, a normal later TR box uses 90w, if you insist
on putting this into an overdrive trans., you WILL be eating OD parts for
dinner!
The reason for this is that Laycock overdrives have many small parts and
orifices that are designed to be lubed by a relatively light oil eg: 30w
range. The 90w simply cannot get into the small oil passages with sufficiant
volume to provide adaquate lubrication. Hence, premature overdrive failure!
On the otherhand, the TR box is perfectly happy with a good grade of 20W50
oil, it will lube it well, last a long time, and wonder of wonders you will
also find it shifts smoother! The only caution here, and it holds true
anyway, is that you may want to change the gearbox oil at the recommended
intervals instead of the typical and tradition interval of once per
millenium.
Thanks for the feedback and I hope you are listening, because ODs cost too
much to be breaking just because B(ps)L couldn't make up their mind 20 odd
years ago.
(ps: The info shared above comes from having worked in a British repair shop,
that among other things built trannys, during the late 70's when all this was
going on. We just smiled, kept putting 20W50 into the OD boxes, and NEVER had
one come back...)
Cheers!
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