4AD Fibreglass Gear Box Cover

[Stephen]

Hi Everyone .. I have acquired a fibreglass cover that goes over the gearbox inside the 4AD, and need some advice on how to fit it ..
I have to drill a hole in the cover so the gear-stick extension housing can go thru it, which is no problem,.. the problem is taking the small aluminium housing, that the gear-stick sits in, off .. there looks like 2 aluminium rivets holding it on, and if I drill these out, there's no way, that I can see, to replace them once everything is back together as they need flattening out on the inside.
Can anyone help with a solution ?

[mikeyr]

my fiberglass cover was 2 pieces, the one piece covered the tranny and the second was cut out so it would fit. I may have pictures but not sure.

[kabu]

Hi Stephen,

I have a similar one piece fibreglass cover and had the same problem. You can overcome that by drilling out the two rivets holding gear-stick extension in place and replacing them with short 1/4" countersink screws. It is then possible to assemble the gear-stick extension and the gear stick after the fibreglass cover is in place.

I did not find very good pictures from this but here is one.

Gear-stick extension attachment with screws

I have thought of trying to fabricate an original looking elastic gearbox cover from polyurethane rubber, but haven't really decided whether I will try that or not. We'll see.

Regards,
Pekka

[Stephen]

WHY DID I NOT THINK OF THAT ????? Great idea Pekka .. will give it a go, and thanks for your advice as well Mike .. Regards Stephen

[Stephen]

Hi Everyone .. just a little bit of info on the results of this or lack of .. When the rivets are drilled out they leave a countersunk hole on the inside of the shaft , which is way to thin to take a thread .. so I took the shaft around to a mate of mine so he could fill the countersink holes with his Mig welder, which I then intended to drill and tap with a 3/16" tap. But he said why not just pop rivet it ... so I did, using stainless steel 3/16 pop rivets about 1/2 inch in length, the riveter pulled the rivet up inside the countersunk hole and it worked a treat ..
So now you have 3 options, cut the gearbox cover, thread & screw it or pop rivet it ...
Regards Stephen

[kabu]

Hi Stephen,

Indeed, drilling the original rivets and attaching the extension with suitable size pop-rivet is certainly another option to do the job.

Regards,
Pekka