Hi, i'm taking my 360 in to college tomorrow to swap the gearbox over as the old FDU has finally gone kaput. Any hints or tips on things that i should watch out for as this will be the first time i'v done a gearbox swap on a 360. Also what sort of timescale should i be aiming for to getting it done (not including tea/bacon sandwidge breaks ) I can swap a gearbox on my 205 in 2 hours and the 360 box looks pertty easy so about the same time

It's a case of 'how rusty is a piece of string?' unfortunately. If the fasteners are half as corroded as the ones on my breaker were, budget a whole day, lots of grinder discs, and one of those machines that bleeps swearwords.

Make sure you have a quality set of Allen (hex) keys, and some sort of pipe to exert a littlte bit of leverage onto them. the bolts on the driveshafts were very tight as were the ones joinging the splines on the torque tube to the gearbox.

Yeah be VERY CAREFUL not to round off those ones. If you're lucky and the fasteners are clean and solid you'll manage fine with ordinary tools. Good luck as this will either be easy or impossible.

I'v had a god experience with seized bolts before (this is why i hate working on road cars) so i'v got a few tricks up mu=y sleve for getting them off. I'll post up later with how my day went. Thanks

Being a 360 it should have 10mm headed bolts on teh drive shafts. I know later 360's do for sure

DAMM CRAP ASS. what i crappy day i had doing that damm gearbox, it was one of those jobs where everything that could have gone wrong did. All of the bolts were seized in and it took me ages to get them out (although on the plus side i didnt round a single bolt off) and the clevis pin in the gear selector was seized in solid and no amount or drilling, cutting, burning or beating would get it out so i got a grinder out and chopped the selector on the gearbox silly and ground it out until the ball would fall out then i had to take the torque tube off so that i could get the gear selector and drill it out to put an M6 nut and bolt through it. Anyway i'v got the box off now and i'm going to put the new one back in tomorrow and i'm going to pick up my new exhaust as well so the car should be nearly tip-top tomorrow

Well i got the gearbox in today, it all works fine so hopefully i'l never have to thet crap ass job again. The only problem is, is that the reverse light is constantly on? I couldnt find the reverse light sensor either to try and diagnose the problem? Anyone know what could be the problem here? Thanks

Hmm, sounds like you've had a few problems, good job it's working now. As for the reverse lights, maybe this can help.

http://www.volvo300mania.com/forum-uk/v ... c40f764ac4

The sensor is under the gear lever gaitor

Yeah, it probably got disturbed when the linkage was off the gearbox, and slid along, it's adjustable as Dai says at the gear stick end.

Pete

Thanks guys, i'll have a look at that this weekend

I hope you didn't swear too much at my handy work to bodge the drive shaft clamp

SoLaMaNdA wrote:I hope you didn't swear too much at my handy work to bodge the drive shaft clamp

explain

Did you remove the drive shaft clamp from the gearbox end?

Inside there you'll find it bonded with a loctite spline agent as I had one clamp strip on me. Hence why I suggested just replacing the diff without removing the gearbox from the drive shaft