No high ratio :-)

Almost 5:00am, I tried posting last night but fell  asleep after hours of ‘trawling the net’ looking at LT230 transfer boxes! What’s that I hear you say, well it’s the oily and noisy bit under the ‘Old Girl’ that gives it four wheel drive and twice as many gears as Ford Escort. Driving to my parents on a sunny Tuesday morning I ground to a halt just a mile or so from the house. The selection lever had jumped out of high ratio and apart from a making an expensive grating noise it wouldn’t do anything when I tried to reengage it. Undeterred, suspecting a simple linkage fault and knowing that wifey’s Nissan was parked outside the shop ten miles away I continued in low. Of course this meant screaming along in fifth gear at 25mph in a vain attempt to catch the ferry and not having any tools I could do little in the way of repairs.

Abandoning her outside the shop I headed for the mainland an hour late in the Almera, which was a blow because I was taking the Landy to collect some stuff.

 

Of course there was no inkling of this as I left the croft and our pigs behind, here they are grubbing about together for the first time in weeks. We generally try and feed them separately (which can be interesting) but they are much happier in a group than alone, especially the piglets. Unlike sheep, pigs will quite happily allow another sows piglets to suckle.

 

Having no tools to look at the Land Rover and missing the 8:55 ferry gave the ‘wee dug’ and I time to wander around the old pier and battery.

Here’s Molly watching out for the ferry,

the cannon that was to protect the Raasay Narrows from Napoleon’s invasion

 

 

 

 

The beautiful old stone dock that no longer seems to collect festering seaweed since the completion of the new harbour.

After catching the 9:55 and spending the day at my parents doing odd jobs and eating moussaka for lunch it was back home on the 16:15

 

where the ‘opposite shift’ were busy painting ventilation covers

and windlass’s, having missed the showers entirely. Me, I’d been soaked by one in Broadford whilst my son’s sports day had been cancelled in Portree.

Wednesday

Being full of shopping and having a doctors appointment on Wednesday morning I just headed straight home in wifey’s car leaving the Old Girl at the south end. Despite being convinced that my Land Rover required little more than adjustment to the linkage on the transfer gear lever I didn’t want to take the risk.

After the usual round of feeding on Wednesday morning I tootled south for a 9:00am appointment along with my tools to try and fix the Land Rover.

The Hallaig returning to Raasay.

The ‘wee dug’ finding ‘good sniffs’ outside our community shop

whilst I crawled under the Old Girl.

The old Raasay Mill cum Heritage Centre.

The Raasay clinic.

After my visit to the doctor, and having found nothing amiss underneath, I started to remove the rubber mats and stuff to gain access to the transfer lever mechanism. It did not look good, insomuch as everything seemed to be working and adjusted correctly It was starting to look serious!

Nothing for it but to head home in low ratio at 25mph and investigate further

once I’d cleared a space in my workshop that is.

Having ascertained that all was well in the selection department I drained the oil from the transfer case,

 

Oh dear!!!! it’s not supposed to be full of metal. Only one thing for it but to remove the sump and have a look

  

or at least try to, I had nine little helpers who seemed determined to get covered in oil and grease

 

Oh dear, oh dear, as soon as I had the sump off it became glaringly obvious what the issue was, there were no teeth on the high ratio selector dog. The large gear, top left is the low ratio gear, the bottom left smaller one the high ratio. Between them is the selector ‘dog clutch’ (it’s in the neutral position midway between the gears), above it you see the low ratio ‘teeth’ and bellow it shiny lumps where the high ratio teeth have been worn away. It is not good

Rutland wind turbine yaw bearings

Having discovered the problem and made a few phone calls I turned my attention to replacing the yaw bearings in my old Rutland wind turbine.

 

There was a lot of play in them and the resulting ‘wobble’ had started to cause the slip rings to arc

 

or at least the top one. Luckily I still have loads of spare parts for this 25 year old machine and soon had it sorted.