Cor it's been a while since I updated this
There's a 5 speed gone in these past 2 weekends. Did most of the stuff myself (with dad's help
); we were slowed down somewhat by me stripping 4 of the 6 manifold down studs and snapping one other one; meaning the manifolds had to come off (they are now back together with stainless studs), and the radiator developing a hole on the first test run...
cheap as chips conversion -
£105 for an LT77 with remote, stick, bellhousing, SD1 gearbox mount, fork and release bearing with carrier
£20 for a set of polybushes for the remote
£16 for Series land rover (2A) master & slave
£80 for an AP clutch kit (for a Discovery 300tdi)
£16 for a dual reservoir
£10 for a 2WD manual flywheel
couple of quid for other bits (gearbox mounts, spigot bush)
total cost of about £250 all in.
2 weekends to put it in (hampered by an ole in the radiator)
Biggest time sinks were making a clutch pedal:
DSC_0444 by
1275midget, on Flickr
This is made from a variety of clutch pedals we had lying about. In essence it's a clutch pedal from a classic mini, with the bearing bored out to fit over the P6 rod that the brake works on. The pedal part is from the Rover 200 I got the engine from for the K-onversion on the Midget. The P6 brake pedal can be seen on the right of the above picture. We've copied the same adjuster mechanism as the brake pedal with an extended threaded rod through the bulkhead to the clutch master:
DSC_0445 by
1275midget, on Flickr
The master is nested in towards the brake master more than other conversions I've seen. This leaves space for a heat shield made of the side of a toaster.
The dual reservoir I got from car builder solutions:
DSC_0446 by
1275midget, on Flickr
it's got an internal divider so should either system fail the other one still works. It's bolted into the same place as the old one, even down to the low level warning lamp.
The brake pedal was cut down to take the accelerator rubber - this was transferred over and a new one will be fitted when it arrives. The brake actuating arm (the rest of the pedal) remains as it was in the auto; there's just enough space between the tunnel and the brake pedal.
The clutch all bolted up - flywheel, spigot bush, driven plate and the rest all went in as it should. The gearbox is VERY HEAVY and took some effort to bench press into position; we ended up pulling it on the last bit with the bellhousing bolts. The gearstick bolted on afterwards and was right in the middle of the hole, which had to be enlarged a little bit to get reverse and 1st to work.
The auto propshaft bolted in perfectly. The SD1 gearbox mount had the ends flattened out and bolted on to the auto mount locations (about 2 inches further back). The rearmost mount of the three had to be cut off (the only mod bar the enlargement of the gearstick hole to the body) so that movement of the box in its mounts didn't cause a propshaft/body interface.
The speedo drive is made from the original P6 right angle drive and cable, plus the end of a broken SD1 cable that was stuck in the gearbox, and a speedo drive holder from a late MG Midget ribcase box (same thread as P6 right angle drive, made of hard nylon) All of these bits fitted together quite cleverly and work really well.
Reversing light switch was going to work well except I pulled the wires out (oops) - I'll fix that when the box is out next. A small wire was made up to get the inhibitor switch to not inhibit.
Raiding the parts bin provided a rubber undergaiter and leather gaiter to finish it off with. I had to move the centre console over to the passenger side a bit to get reverse to work (I've secured it better than standard with 2 discrete self tappers through the bottom of the front ash tray)
And it all works, with no dramas (I had to make a fair old bracket to mount the twin fans on - they were pinned to the old rad so wanted something better)
DSC_0522 by
1275midget, on Flickr
Just cam back 100 miles or so - the box is a bit tired (well, what do you expect for that price!) and the speedo is comedically wrong (about 25% under-read!) but everything else is great. By it's fast now...
Here's a video:
https://flic.kr/p/r4Dntf
I'm really surprised at the difference. The whole car feels more taught, more raw, with a quite noticeably different exhaust noise. Stunning, and somewhat devastating in a straight line. It REALLY needs better tyres; watch this space