Help In the USA with a rattle!!

[tetlow]

Hi Folks

I had a problem yesterday and I wonder if any one could throw any light on it?

We have a 3.5 B with a LT77 box. We did a U turn yesterday and put the front wheels in some deep gravel. The car was going very slowly and no spinning wheels etc.

After this turn there was a noise from under the car that seemed to stop. We drove about 1 mile straight but bottomed out the rear suspension again on a pot hole .On turning left we heard a terrible rattle from under the car. I stopped and the car ticked over OK but when I moved off this terrible rattle started again. It sounded as if something was loose in the engine!!!

When we opened up the bonnet we could hear this rattle now seeming to come from the clutch area, really nasty.

I decided to try to get to the hotel (20 miles) and do more checks there.

On getting over about 20 mph the sound get less and less and went completely.

All the time the engine ran smoothly and the temp / oil pressure was normal.

There are no openings that I know of in the bell housing except for a small drain hole, but the noise sounded like a large rock rolling around and the rattle was relative to rpm not car speed. It seemed impossible for a stone to get caught inside the front pully.

Any suggestions would be appreciates as we are hoping to do 2000+ miles in the next 3 weeks.

All seems OK now but I plan of giving her a good going over before we leave the hotel in a few days.

Regards

David and Terry

[v8man]

i a similar thing on mine but had no bottom cover on the bell housing ,
have you got the bottom cover on the bell housing ??
if you are in NJ i got some friends that can have a look at it for you ?

[tetlow]

Cheers.

We are in Ottawa.

I have the lower cover. The noise seemed to come from something big too.

Its gone now so I will just have to hope for the best.

Ta

Dave

[v8man]

on mine sounded like something big in there gone wrong but till today and 2000 miles later it is ok
just have a very good look at it

best of luck

[tetlow]

Ta

I will try to remove the cover plate and see if a finger or summut has been bouncing around.

Dave

[tetlow]

When the box was pulled we found that the 5 gear cluster had come apart. The jamming and resulting noises were the springs and shift plates falling out!!
I was lucky enough to be given all the spares I needed by an Ottawan. (Ex pat from Birmingham UK of course.)

The Circlip on the end of the output shaft had snapped and allowed the gears to move along the shaft.

We were lent the TR8 official LT77 service manual so found that the correct end float should be 2 thou but I am led to believe that 10 or so is OK. The broken clip was 1.2mm thick and the replacement one 2mm!! This meant that the clearance before failure was 30thou. 16 times the recommended amount. I would assume that all this float allowed the Circlip (thin weak version) to fail. After refitting the gears with the new Circlip we had 8thou, which I was quite happy with.

After the car came back to the UK I took the box back to the MGOC and they have been very good. They are sourcing all the parts I used and will send them on to Canada to the chap who helped me out.

The box is going back to Holland where it was built to get checked over so my warranty can start again. I had only done 1500 miles when she broke.

Dave

[JP.]

Who's the company in Holland. I had trouble finding one overhere in Holland so I ordered one at TM Transmisions in Birmingham with a year warranty. Had to sent mine over and recieved a rebuild one back.

[tetlow]

I do not know the name but if you contact the MGOC they could tell you.