How do you remove the gearstick from its plate?

NVNL · Post by **NVNL** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 9:41 am

Not being a welding sort of person I have purchased a new main gearstick for my Super Dexta.

So far, so good.

Sadly my efforts to get the old stick out of the gearbox top plate have not been productive.

I have searched this site and the old site to no avail.

I would be obliged if someone could point out the correct technique.

Tubal Cain · Post by **Tubal Cain** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 10:22 am

If you examine the gearstick you will see that there is snap ring above the spring, you need to remove this ring using a screwdriver.
You can then remove the spring and the shroud which may be seized on the lever. If it is seized you will need to free it by supporting the cover and gently trying to tap the end of the lever.

The cover is quite fragile and it is very easy to knock off the corners in way of the bolt holes. There is a locating peg in the cover which locates in a groove in the gearlever, this may be worn and should be replaced.

When you reassemble the gearstick make sure that the shroud is free to slide up and down the lever so that the spring keeps the spherical faces in contact with each other and apply grease to the faces.

The spring ring can be refitted using a suitable length of pipe to drive it back into the groove.

Gerald

Bensdexta · Post by **Bensdexta** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 10:37 am

Tubal Cain wrote:If you examine the gearstick you will see that there is snap ring above the spring, you need to remove this ring using a screwdriver.
You can then remove the spring and the shroud which may be seized on the lever. If it is seized you will need to free it by supporting the cover and gently trying to tap the end of the lever.

I gently tapped the side of the shroud, all round ,plus lots of WD40 and shroud came loose in10mins or so.

Tubal Cain wrote:The cover is quite fragile and it is very easy to knock off the corners in way of the bolt holes. There is a locating peg in the cover which locates in a groove in the gearlever, this may be worn and should be replaced.

When you reassemble the gearstick make sure that the shroud is free to slide up and down the lever so that the spring keeps the spherical faces in contact with each other and apply grease to the faces.

The spring ring can be refitted using a suitable length of pipe to drive it back into the groove.

Or you can use a suitably sized ring spanner tapped with a hammer to push the spring-ring down and into its retaining groove.
All the best,

NVNL · Post by **NVNL** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 5:20 pm

Many thanks both.

After some thought I decided to support the lever in a vice and use use the screwdriver to drive the snap ring in the direction of the gear knob. Pleasingly this worked after a little hammer play AND the snap ring neither broke nor pinged off to oblivion.

Next I tapped the lever down through the cover plate and cleaned all with paraffin and a paint brush.

Rather than the locating pin being worn in the cover, the locating slot in the old lever's hemisphere was very worn indeed so I left the pin to its own devices. The new lever needed quite a bit of tapping before it went home into the cover plate. The end profile of the new lever was smaller than the old one and I wasn't at confident of a good end result.

The new lever was driven up though the cover plate with the help of some Castrol and a hammer. The metal shroud, spring and snap ring were loosely assembled and as no pipe fell readily to hand I used a 1/2" Whitworth box spanner to bear on the snap ring. It all refused point blank to be driven down so I used the vice to compress all. Wonderful!

Perhaps best of all changing gear is much, much smoother. Time will tell as to whether it sticks in second gear now and then.

What an excellent forum this is. Gratitude to those who put in the work.