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MG TD TF 1500 - Gearbox Numbers

I've discovered the gearbox number is stamped into the top face of the gearbox casing underneath the lid, along with the following info:

TD Gearboxes were made in numerical sequence, where the first letter is always T & the second letter is a letter from A to Z. The following 3 numbers ran from 001 to 999.

With TF boxes the first letter was U, the second a letter from A to Z, with the following 3 numbers again running from 001 to 999.

Y-type boxes used the same format, where S is always the first letter & the second letter was a letter from A to Z & also numbered sequentially to 999.

The following is from F.6 of the manual:

Gearbox No. TF 513. Engine No.3114 Balls peened.
Gearbox No. TF 939. Engine No. (?) New 3/4 shaft with circlip.
Gearbox No. TJ 800.Engine No.6533 Additional ball added & new 3/4 shaft with indent.

So TF513 (a TD gearbox!) came before TF939, and TJ800 was about 3,000 later (they didn’t use letters I or O).

Engine numbers can be misleading because engines and gearboxes were both made in batches, so an early engine could have had a later gearbox fitted to it or vice versa. Because of the age of these vehicles it is also quite possible that a box may contain a variety of early & late components including gears, shafts & hubs sourced from a number of different cars.

Does anybody know if a record exists of the gearbox that was originally fitted to a particular car? At the time the manual was printed such a record obviously existed. I have a photocopy of the Abingdon log book page for my car which only shows destination, handing, car number, engine number & build date.
Peter TD 5801
P Hehir

Some good observations there Peter, I will have to take a closer look at my two spare boxes. If these were fitted at the Morris engines plant then the gearbox numbers will be just as mixed up (relevant to chassis numbers) as the engine numbers were. But if they were fitted at the engines plant then they 'could' possibly be in a close sequence to the engine numbers. I guess BMC management would have been notified of the small changes to specification and they would have passed that information on the the manual producers to be published as production changes (Eg; Page F6). The manual producers did not know (or did not want to know) of any batch mix-ups on the Abingdon factory floor that would have made the manuals less accurate. If we could find a sequence of cars with their original boxes then we could make some deductions here.
I am not aware of any record showing the gearbox numbers for each car.

Matthew.
M Magilton

We have restored two sets of consecutive number cars and I know the location of another two in NZ but we never recorded the gearbox numbers on our job cards.

It would now be difficult to ask owners to strip that section out to read the numbers.
Rod Brayshaw

Matthew. I'm curious at your reference to the Morris plant & the Engines plant. They could arrive at Abingdon's assembly line as a unit or as separate items? Why is this so? As I've heard nothing further to my enquiry above perhaps the record of gearboxes was also tossed out when the new assembly line was built..
The reason for my initial post, apart from sharing some info I'd dug up, is I have the oportunity to buy the gearbox that was allegedly originally fitted to my car, making a rare three piece set, but if there is no way to confirm that then what's the point? Apart from having a spare I might as well stay with the two piece.
Cheers
Peter TD 5801
P Hehir

Peter - I don't believe there is any way to determine whether a particular trans came with a particular car.

Say, I do believe that I have your trans. $5,000 and it's yours!

LOL Tom Lange
MGT Repair
t lange

...other then the original owner changing gearboxes and knowing it might have come from your car...no other way of knowing.... keep what you have and save a bunch of money....
gblawson(gordon- TD27667)

Sounds like a great deal Tom. I do like a man with a sense of humour. Whose account do I write the cheque from?
Peter TD 5801
P Hehir

This thread was discussed between 07/01/2014 and 16/01/2014

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