Moving on with my landy, I was
having a love hate battle with the 3.54's that I has installed earlier
into the axles. Yes, they are great for a city or highway driven vehicle,
but once you left the tarmac,
they proved to be useless. When I went 4x4ing, 4High was never used. The gears
were so over geared,
that the landy didn't have the grunt to climb the easiest bank. Therefore, I had
to use 4Low all the time.
So, I reinstalled the 4.70's in
the alxes over x-mas holidays and then I was on the search for an used
overdrive. As luck would have it, 2 came available here in Sweden, BUT the
fantasy prices for them! I
did offer real price offers, but they were refused. I just can't see me paying
about 60-70% of new,
for a part that you have no history. I for one, wasn't prepared to pay so much,
when there was a risk,
that the overdrive was shot.
A few months later, a friend
called and told me of a Fairy Overdrive that was for sale in Oslo,
Norway, for under half of the prices wanted here in Sweden. A few phone calls
and a transfer of
money, I was the owner of a "reasonably/fairly" priced overdrive.
I'm not going into
installing an overdrive, it's that easy. I had this one installed, under an
hour. But
after it was installed, I did do an upgrade to it. I know of the Fairy
Overdrives, being famous for
leaking, especially from the breather on the top. The breather actually is
rather crude. A hole in the
top plate, a simple splash guard under the hole and a cotter pin inserted into
it. That's it!
Well, I figured, I can't do any worst, so I'll make a breather.
As you can see in the
pictures, I drilled out the top breather hole and insterted a grease nipple.
Before using a grease nipple, make sure that you remove the spring and ball from
it's insides.
Once the top plate was
installed again, I then used clear tubing as the breather hose. The hose, I
made it long enough, so that it could be secured under the top plate of
the seatbox. A few plastic straps
later and the job done.
The first test drive with
the overdrive installed, well, the overdrive screamed like a banche choir.
Obviously, the gears needing to bed themselves. But after a few miles and about
two weeks later, the
noise level did drop considerably. Now, several thousand Km later, there is only
a slight wine from the
overdrive. I use it all the time. The overdrive does performe as well as
installing 3.54's, by dropping
the rpm's by about 700-800 rpm, but I now can select when I want to do this.
It's nice to be able to
use 4High again. ;-)
Excellent piece of kit, well worth the wait.