nobody likes making mistakes. nobody likes getting ripped off. feeling like you might have done both can get you really steamed. it's only human to try and find someone to blame. (My wife seems to have figured out the solution for this - I wear a lot of blame for all sorts of things I didn't know I had control over - like the weather - eg I got wet getting out of the car because the garage is full of junk - like as if the junk in the garage somehow miraculously made it rain!) Anyway, my point is, assigning blame and even getting Andrew to refund some or all of your cash is not going to repair the gearbox or get your truck back on the road.
Andrew is amongst the most honest people I know (and I even go to church
) and trying to place blame in a situation like this is like trying to teach a pig to sing - it just wastes your time and annoys the pig. It seems strage to me (and, on face value, a lot of people), that after years of honest dealings, Andrew would deliberately sell a junk gearbox and call it good.
It also seems strange to me that an alleged engineer would modify a hardened, high precision component without either first removing it from the mechanism or doing the required research to see if there were any other alternative methods of making the gearbox fit the motor in question. For example, since it seems you had/have access to a fairly large milling machine, it should have been possible, with a large diameter flycutter, to face off 5mm from each end of the bellhousing, and fit a spacer behind the spigot bearing, or fit a spigot bearing with an extended inner race, to make up the deficit in the input shaft length. Or, at the point of finding out that after all the trouble of finding a bargain price gearbox and having it there ready to bolt in, it didn't fit, deciding to cut your losses and shelve the project for another day. If you work in or around the automotive industry, you well know that sometimes things don't go to plan even when it should be a simple case of replacing like with like, just doing repairs, and modifications open up another whole realm of possibilities of brokenness. Things just don't go to plan, stuff ends up more expensive than you thought it would, things need doing twice and four times to get it how you want it.
now I understand you have a 1HZ motor and need a gearbox to fit it. I have in my possession a H150F gearbox in UNKNOWN condition, which, as far as I know, was once bolted to a 1HZ motor. it turns at both ends without excessive slop, makes no bad noises when turned by hand, there is no evidence of oil leaks, there were no chunks of brass or steel in the oil, and it selects all gears. This gearbox comes with NO WARRANTY, however I am willing to sell it to Andrew for exactly the amount I happen to owe him for a previous transaction for which an amount is still outstanding. From there, hopefully between the two of you, you can work something out freight wise. I'm sure there is sufficient outerlimits traffic going up and down the east coast to make it inexpensive for everyone especially considering the publicity surrounding these alleged dodgy dealings.
Everyone take a deep breath and relax. nobody has deliberately ripped anyone off, and you wouldn't find a jury to convict Andrew from within the outerlimits population. Mistakes may have been made on both sides of a transaction which has been made more difficult due to distance and expense.
dow50r, Turbo42, do you guys want to use my spare box to help you kiss and make up?
feel the love (no, that's a shifter in my pocket)
DD