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gearbox identification help & required gearbox oil

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R

recordsj

Jedi Warrior
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I have a 74 MG Midget that has a midget 1500 engine in it. It also has a Laycock type J overdrive in it. I am wondering where the gearbox came from and what year? On the side of the gearbox it has a cast marking of 22G1553 (but that could be just a casting part number). Any help?

Why I am asking this is that I want to find out what type of oil is needed in the gearbox.
 
Re: gearbox identification help & required gearbox oil

I am thinking from other looking around and research that I actually have a spitfire transmission and overdrive. Does anyone have any info on what type of oil to put into the gearbox and overdrive?
 
Re: gearbox identification help & required gearbox oil

The Spit boxes use 90WT GL-4 gear lube. An alternative that is superior in my estimation is RedLine MT-90.
I ran Royal Purple synthetic in the race car.
Jeff
 
Re: gearbox identification help & required gearbox oil

Check out this link:

https://www.brit.ca/~tboicey/midget/midget_overdrive.html

It should give you some good info on the overdrive conversion. This guy says he uses straight up 30wt motor oil in his overdrive tran. It may be worth asking on the Triumph forum. Those guys will be much more familiar with the spit overdrive set up.

wick
 
Many folks use 30-weight, non-detergent oil in the Laycock gearboxes. The N-D oil resists "foaming" that may occur with meshing gears and shear forces present in transmissions. Foaming reduces the surface tension of the oil, which may lead to failures.

In fact, Quantumechanics, a well-known Laycock gearbox restorer in CT, will void the warranty on their reconditioned Laycock OD gearboxes if you <u>don't</u> use 30 weight, non-detergent oil.

I don't think the original Laycock gearboxes required N-D oil, but the modern lubricants are better.

You might contact John Esposito at Quantumechanics, there's an email "contact us" page on the website. Send him an email and ask, can't go wrong.

He has a lot of my money, so I trust him on these matters. /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/angel.gif

Good luck with the OD, unusual for Midgets and tons of fun!
 
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