Hitchcocks Forum

I spent several days working on an old Indian Albion that would drop into gear when you pushed it off the center stand and also if you leaned it to the left and walked forward or backwards. I had pulled the motor out and changed the selector fork but still no answer.I must have had the box apart a dozen times. I finally gave up and told the owner I couldn't fix it and I would just have to put it back together and he would just have to live with it. I finally put it back together and it worked fine and I have no idea what the problem was. I hate that

It just needed to be stripped and overhauled. Which is what you did. New fork selector? Yeah. That was it.. Don't overthink it, enjoy your success.

Wasn't the detent Paul turned around the wrong way perhaps?

Bloody autocorrect that should be pawl

Hi Simon, I have rebuilt countless of these boxes, I can usually do them with my eyes shut but recently I have had 2 old ones that have given me real problems. What annoys me is now that it is fixed I really have no idea what was causing the problem so if somebody else had a similar problem I couldn't help them

Norm

It's a b****r this scenario...I have stripped, cleaned and reassembled several sets of components, ranging from gearboxes to vintage light switches, in an attempt to find a mystery ailment. The mere act of paying them a bit of attention seems to get rid of said ailment! (The exception was a washing machine pump motor, which worked better after reassembly, but made more of the appalling howl which made me strip it in the first place....ah well)

Cheers

TimG

Hi Tim, mostly these days we just throw things out if they stop working because it is easier and cheaper to replace them, but with some things we continue to repair and pull our hair out trying to work out why they don't work. One of the problems with Enfields is that the majority of replacement parts don't fit so by the time you make them fit you are not sure what you did to solve the original problem.

Norm - You have my sympathy ! I recently found myself in a similar position with an Indian Albion that was overstroking on downward changes. I first tried adjusting the backplate (111108) every which way - to no avail. I then renewed the stop plate (111120) as both the stops on this had been ground away by a PO. Great - now it would change down without false neutrals - well, some of the time anyway. Trouble was, it was now very reluctant to change up at all! Reluctantly, I refitted the original stop plate and went back to adjusting it every which way, again without success. By now I was ready to simply give up, but decided as a desperate last try to turn the stop plate around (" i.e. inside out"). It now changes gear up and down PERFECTLY, and I haven't had a missed gearchange since. It's a minor miracle to me that no threads stripped during all this dismantling and re-assembling (15/16 times?), not from overtightening but merely from wear ! And yes, I do just hate it.............

I blame global warming.

Wotcha.

Ethanol . . . bound to be the bleedin' effinol ain't it ?