Bad day at the office

[alangraham]

There's no light at the end of the tunnel yet. I spent from 4pm till 8pm tonight trying to attach these wires. Even the wife had a go. Having given up for the day in despair I have just seen the suggestion to cut the female connect or down the middle and this is certainly worth a try next, so long as I don't butcher it and it still grips the spade. Could be a delicate operation. The really annoying thing is that I have fixed the overdrive fault but one job has led to another. Jonners I couldn't,t find what you referred to on the Moss site and didnt understand your last sentence, sorry. Not sure what lucar connectors are either. Heard the term before. Will try again tomorrow but feeling up to here with it tonight and need a sleep before I take up the challenge afresh. Good old Leyland.

[Richard the old one]

If it is the same as that fitted on the 1500 Spitfire with J type overdrive it will be part number 153726. It is just the last bit of the wiring that goes from the bullet connectors to the switch.

Rimmers charge £11.99 & Moss-Europe £13.50

[Robert 352]

Like Jonners who has claimed, quite rightly I suspect, to have done practically all jobs on these cars, I too can claim to have carried out these specific tasks which are causing you a bit of frustration.

The gearbox bung. I would be very wary about using a standard socket on the bung for unless it is a four or an eight sided socket then at best the socket if it is a six or twelve sided socket will only grab on one of the four corners of the bung. And if it slips you will finish up burring the bung corner and so make it more difficult to remove in the future. The correct socket can be bought for not a great deal of money, I found mine on eBay in the USA. It’s called a female pipe bung socket and looks like this.

20131224 Sunex 214fp pipe plug socket.jpg (7.71 KiB) Viewed 426 times

Works a treat on, in my case, both the sump and diff bungs too.

The wiring to the overdrive switch.

Jonners mentioned in his second post how you thread the wiring for the switch “in from the bottom”. When I did this job I had the gearlever off on the bench and I passed a draw wire up from the hole on the side of the gearlever, on my car this is covered by the gaiter which sits on the plastic tray, and then very carefully taped one wire and its connector ahead of the second wire and its connector and then gently pulled the draw wire up from the bottom until I had the two switch connectors sitting out the top.

I was able to reuse the existing little spade connectors but I removed mine from their respective wires, worked a bit of heat shrink tubing down each wire first, resoldered the wire to each connector, borrowed a hair dryer and shrank the heat shrink around both the soldered joint and over the wire itself, in order to provide a bit more support for the wire and connector.

I have found that there is a trick to getting both the switch cover (the switch cap or whatever the correct name for it is) and the connectors to the switch sitting correctly. If I have to remove the switch then I unclip the switch cover by working a flat blade of some sort under its edge and working right round the switch cover until it just pops off.

When it comes to putting the switch and switch cover back on the gearlever knob I reach down to where the wires enter the bottom of the gearlever and work them up the gearlever so that you can fit the spade terminals into the switch, then you gently pull the two wires down together and in doing so it will pull the switch cover down onto the gearlever knob. When the cover is ready to push into place on the gearlever knob, then push it down and gently ease the wires below down the gearlever a fraction as well and the wires, connectors and switch cover should all sit very nicely within the recess in the knob.

I also mount the gearlever knob so that it sits near the top of the gearlever itself, I screw the round slotted nut which sits down in the gearlever down until it sits flush with the top of the gearlever and then bring the chromed nut which sits under the knob up to tighten everything.

It will hopefully allow plenty of space for the switch, and the two spade connectors sitting below it to sit within the knob without crushing the wires, connectors and switch.
Best of luck

Robert

[Jon Tilson]

This are lucar connectors in the picture but the OE ones are scaled down quite a bit more. They are only about 1/8 -3/16 inch wide.

I'm not sure you can still get them. The Moss type ones are small tubes with a slot and are reasonably sleeved.

Roberts description of how to fit one is excellent...

My last Moss stick loom was a bit fried. I think it had dropped off a bit and shorted out, so I replaced the damaged connector
with an internal pin from a mutliplug. This was a tad too long so had to be careful sleeved.

If you're starting from a damaged or bodged place I would go for a new stick loom. As Robert says getting the knob up against the last possible thread on the internal top collar nut and tightening up the bottom one against it will give the maximum internal
clearance and prevent shorting out. I also stuck a bit of insulating tape across the bottom of the switch as the exposed blades
are pretty close and quite capable of being jumped by the back emf from the solenoid. Ive had many a shock in the spit, especially
if the seat is a bit damp if I left the hood down and got caught in a shower.

Jonners

[alangraham]

Success! As Richard suggested I cut down the middle of each female connector and found there was still quite a bit of grip when they were slotted on to the spades within the switch. Like Jonners suggested I taped over the blades in the bottom of the switch as there is a real risk of a short, in my opinion. I tied the top of the wires together with cotton to facilitate pushing them back down the stick. The top clicked back on fine, went for test drive and everything was OK. What pleased me was that this was the first time I have fixed a fault on my car without paying someone else to do it and I couldn't have done it without the help of those who contributed to previous posts. So thank you everyone and I will be purchasing the things you suggested. Next I plan to fit a fuse in the overdrive circuit as I've seen how easy it is to short, And I will post some pictures of my damaged OD casing on the site, just as soon as I get a new computer out of the box and put this tablet down.

[Jon Tilson]

Fusing the o-d gearbox loom is indeed a good idea. At the moment a short in this bot takes out the fuse for all
ignition fed circuits, indicators, wipers and instruments among the most important.

I do this by getting a 4 fuse box from an MGB which gives you 3 ignition fed circuits and one non ignition circuit.

You can separate the green feeds at the fuse box pretty easilly.

Jonners