Truth about sealed tranny and rear pumpkin?

samiam

New Member
Ages ago (late 1970, I think) I bought a used 1966 2000 TC from an auto dealership bankruptcy auction in Philadelphia, PA. The car had 62,000 miles on it, and was in very good to excellent cosmetic condition. Even had an intact IceAlert. Mechanicals, as I would find out, were a different story. I had a blast in that car for about three weeks, scaring the tar out of my friends by taking curves at what seemed to be twice the fastest prudent speed, and just generally galavanting about in a very classy automobile. Then the transmission fell apart, making the car inoperable. A couple of years prior, I had worked as a shop gopher and light duty mechanic in a used foreign car dealership nearby. I had hoped to get the head mechanic, with whom I remained on good terms, to help me repair the problem (I got the car for a low price, and didn't have much to spend to fix it). After examining the car for a day, and making inquiries, he told me that the prospects weren't very good. According to him, Rover had made sure that no one could tinker with the innards of the transmission OR the rear gears by welding the covers on, instead of the normal bolted arrangements. He told me that my only option was to purchase used parts from a yard in the New York City area, with no assurance that what we would put in was any better than what we were taking out. I never checked up on that contention in the intervening half-century, but since I found this forum, I thought I might as well ask about it. Now, I could see that sealing practice as a plausible precaution for the rear, to keep anyone who didn't know what they were doing from mucking around with the DeDeon tube mechanics, but I can't imagine the benefit of applying the same practice to the transmission, which I believe was fairly ordinary. So, was he on the level, or might he been avoiding doing a time-consuming favor by telling a little white lie?
 
Having plenty of experience with the 2000 manual boxes, but none with the autos, I doubt that Rover did any welding on the auto boxes - BW35s - they would hust install them as delivered by BW, set up as ordered by Rover. Have you/did you seen anything welded on the box yourself? The 'mechanics' of the DeDion system are dead simple and the only welding there would be the minimum required by its design.
 
Having rebuilt my own TC manual gearbox I can tell you he was blowing smoke up your arse! He just either didn’t know of the gearbox or (more likely) didn’t want to fix it. :)
 
As said above, they were never welded shut.. you can strip everything on a P6, engine, gearbox, diff, de dion tube..
 
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