Ring Gear Change

Safety Warning: Please note your health may be at risk if you do not take sensible safety precautions. Never work under an unsupported vehicle, do not take shortcuts. The Ford Anglia 105E Owners Club cannot be held responsible for any accidents or injury arising from advice given from this article. Safety advice can be obtained from the RoSPA on 0121 2482000 or check with Yellow pages, 0121 2482000. The advice and information given are purely opinions of the writer not necessarily those of the Ford Anglia Owners Club.

My 5cwt ThamesVan with windows doesn't get used that much during winter. But back in February, I used it to go down to the Ace Café. As is usual, I got it out of hibernation a couple of days prior to going. All seemed well, no leaks & started ok. I used it that evening to run a small errand, only to find on my return to the vehicle, the starter wouldn't work. Well it did for about a nano second. Ah dodgy connection I thought. Waggled a few wires around like you do but to no avail. Being dark and to cut a long story short, a tow was required, and she started. Strange I thought. The trip to Ace proved to be trouble free. The next scheduled outing for the van was the MoT a few weeks later. Jumped in, pulled the starter, two turns then…nothing just stopped. This time was not so easy to sort out as the van was in a vastly overcrowded dark lock up garage. A tow out was required only to find the rear wheels locked up. To cut another long story short the van eventually made it home. Removal of the starter motor revealed very little and a check of the flywheel teeth through the starter hole revealed nothing either. I changed the starter and all has seemed ok since. One of the other intended jobs on my van was to upgrade the clutch assembly to a more modern diaphragm type. This was brought forward when the thrust bearing started making an awful noise at the MoT station. A high-pitched whine would be the best description, either that or I'd run over the MoT testers foot. So back home, out came the gearbox. This is another extremely even longer than long story which will form another tech article in the future, so fast forward……….to the removal of the flywheel for further examination to the sticking starter problem I'd had.

Picture 1, shows that for some bizarre reason the teeth are very badly damaged, on the back edge of the ring gear, hence why on earlier inspection the damage could not be seen. The engine has done around 2,000 miles since total rebuild, and I know that the ring gear was in perfect health when initially assembled. The old original starter incidentally also had no damage to it either. Anyway, I decided to change the ring gear. So here is how I did it.

Stick your kitchen oven on top whack which in my case was 230 degrees centigrade. Place your NEW ring gear on top shelf or middle with a fan oven. Now make a cup of tea for the missus so she has no need to see what you are doing for at least the next half hour!!!

Picture 2, Hacksaw with erm..a hacksaw carefully through the ring gear taking care not to cut into the flywheel. I then did a second cut making a large vee. (See picture 3). I then chiselled (picture 4) the ring away from the locating ridge and it cracked enough so it became loose and fell off (Picture 5).
I'm afraid here the photos stop as I was on my own doing this and trying to juggle hot metal plus a camera is pretty difficult.

On the instruction tag that came with my new ring gear it said heat to 360 degrees centigrade. The Haynes manual though says 205 degrees. So who is right?? I doubt that many domestic ovens go as high as 360 degs anyway. So 230 degrees it had to be. After 30 minutes, I removed the ring gear from the oven with very thick welding gloves. The replacement ring gear has a small chamfer on one bore side only, so common sense tells you to put it on this side first. I then gently tapped it on until it reached the retaining lip. That's it job done. Well not quite. The first attempt failed so did the second and third. I eventually had to machine a small chamfer on the flywheel itself, just to get it started and I also left the ring gear in the oven for an hour, but I got there in the end. Best make the missus two cups of tea………..

Picture 1	Picture 2
Picture 3	Picture 4
Picture 5