9 tooth main shaft into early gear carrier

[jamesbissland]

Hi all

Im looking to install a 9 tooth main shaft into an early(‘69) gear carrier..

I have read some conflicting info about the bearing that is needed..

Is it the carrier size or the shaft size that is different between the housing/shaft bearing?

Can I run the later bearing that come on the shaft in the earlier carrier?

The simple answer would be to use the later gear carrier, but unfortunately it is damaged beyond repair, and quite hard to come by down under.

Thanks
JB

[Casting Timmy]

The 9 tooth mainshaft in it's factory form has a larger OD at the end for the bearing, some convert the back half of the late shaft to the same dimensions on the back half of the early shaft so it works with the earlier gear carrier.

I think the best conversion I've heard of is taking the 091 mainshaft and machining the back side of it like the Weddle hybrid so you have the splined hub still but get to use a nut on the end of the mainshaft.

Your late model gear carrier can be reworked by making it a larger hole and putting in an aluminum piece and then machining back to the correct diameter. These aluminum inserts really help the life of the gear carrier as well.

In theory the late model bearing has a larger OD and your early gear carrier could be machined out for that bearing, but usually the early gear carriers had a larger OD bearing on the bottom and I'm not sure how close those two would come together. So an early to late conversion may not really work because of that lower bearing.

[jamesbissland]

Brilliant, Thanks Tim!
So really I need to track down a new 311 or 081301173 gear carrier housing?..
Do you have a spare one lying around by chance?
Thanks again!