The Damage

I was struggling to get to a starting point on the van, so I enlisted a little help from a T4 Forum friend, Rob, to come and take a look at the van and it's problems. We took the end off the gearbox, to check on 5th gear, hoping to see a couple of tiny metal segments broken. I hoped for this, as it was one of the possibilities, and also the cheapest to fix, and I had already acquired the parts to repair it.

Upon taking the end off the gearbox, we were greeted with:



A completely dry gearbox. And a pair of 5th gear cogs that were completely stripped of all the teeth they once had.



Basically, a combination of the complete lack of oil in the box to lubricate it, and the 220 miles travelled mostly in 5th gear had caused them to heat up and pretty much disintegrate. Joy. But not the end of the world to fix. More expensive than previously hoped, but still not too bad. So I bought some new 5th gear cogs etc off a man on the T4 Forum, and had the van go off to a mechanic to check it out and to fit them.

When the mechanic came, he had to trailer the van away, as I had no tax on it. As soon as he went to drive it on the trailer, he looked out the window at me and shook his head. After finally getting it on the trailer, he told me that it almost certainly had lost a cylinder, which was causing a rather loud racket. I asked what the damage would be to fix that, and was told to start looking for a replacement engine, or have it rebuilt at a cost of about £1100.

Also, the gearbox was damaged internally as well, which meant sourcing a replacement gearbox as well.

Oh, remember the fuel leak it had? Yeah, that meant the fuel pump needed reconditioning too, at a cost of about £175.

Going well so far.