Initially I was going to be a big girl and not strip the gearboxes down, but then thought to myself that, that wouldn’t really fit the bill on a full restoration, so I dove in head first!  Initially I just stripped the gears out and started to work on the casing.  It was thick in over 20 years worth of grease, oil and general crap, so I knew that this would need some serious effort to bring back to new.

First off I used a load of WD40 to breakdown the grease on the casing, inside and out.  With the WD40 doing the hard work upfront, I then got a red hot bucket of water at the ready and new bottle of the world’s greatest de-greaser…fairy liquid.  Why Fairy?  Well, back in my biker days a mechanic once told me that the best way to clean and de-grease a messy bike chain was to use a mix of fairy and WD40.  This technique saw me good for many years, and I knew it’d work here too.

So after 15 minutes hard scrubbing, the casing was gleaming like new.  Magic.  Coupled with the loooooovely new motor plate I’d picked up (yes more spending) it was looking beautiful.

Now onto the gears themselves.

As you’d expect, more than 20 years of grease and dirt is going to be pretty messy, so there were no surprises here (or where there? Find out more on that later in the post).  I pulled every bit apart and treated it a good long soak in a bath of WD40, followed by a toothbrush clean up and dry off.

The bearings now move like silk and everything is nice and shiny.  All ready for re-building, re-greasing and dropping back in.

So, out comes the Egress manual.  Everything is going back together as expected.  But hold on, what’s this? The drive gear parts I have don’t match up to the instructions? What the hell?