Tiller Gearbox Cracked

jbrumberg · Mar 13, 2006

To All:
The gearbox on my Woods T-42 tiller sustained a ~3" hairline crack on the bottom third of the gearbox many years ago. Each spring and before all tilling I have to refill the gearbox with SAE 90 gear lube. I am amazed that this tiller still works. I am curious as to how I can best repair this crack. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you in advance for your responses. Jay

RollTideRam · Mar 13, 2006

Have you tried JB weld? JC

jbrumberg · Mar 13, 2006

JC: I never heard of JB Weld before. I did some online research and it appears that this epoxy will meet my needs. It's interesting because I completely resurfaced my boat below the waterline with epoxy 10 years ago and it is still holding up. I had always wondered if the "epoxy solution" would work- I'll give it a shot. Thank you. Jay

john_bud · Mar 13, 2006

The JB weld may work, if it does, the surfaces have to be absolutely free of all oil. That is a pretty high vibration environment too, which may make it fail in the future. Better solutions would be to have it silver soldered, brazed or welded with a nickle rod. It's cheapest to take the guts out of the box first, but a good shop would probably do the remove and replace too. While this may seem like a lot of extra work, to do the epoxy correctly, you should take the guts out too and completely degrease it too.

jb

Wannafish · Mar 13, 2006

You should drill a small hole at each end of the crack before repairing. This will keep the crack from cracking further.

Nasty135 · Mar 13, 2006

You could also Braze it if you have the oxygen & Actelyne torch setup, As stated by previous poster drilling holes at the end of crack will stop further cracking and just need filled in with brazing rod...

Soundguy · Mar 13, 2006

If you can disassemble the box, ad clean it.. I'd silver solder or braze it.. or jbweld it from the inside.. should work fine..

Has to be 100% clean for any of that to work. Might want to drill 2 small stop holes.. one at each end of the crack.. use the smallest drill you can find... make sure to fill those holes with a good slather if you jbweld it.. etc.. check for gear clearance too..

Soundguy