John Needham – Old Car Gearboxes

On Sunday’s Classic Car event at Yarra Glen, about 70 km from Melbourne, hosted by the Association of Motoring Clubs, I met John Needham. John’s marvelous little Austin 7 stood out as being a car that is used, not pampered. John has had his Austin for 50 years and is the car’s third owner. His car’s slightly battered appearance is just my thing. I like to see classics that are driven properly and enjoyed on the road. John is a member of Feral Sports Car Club and, like his fellow members of that club, is a very firm believer that old cars should be used, not just polished. He would much rather see owners out driving their cars to interesting places.

When we met, John was kind enough to invite me to visit his business Old Car Gearboxes in Moorabbin, a south-eastern suburb of Melbourne.

Today, I took him up on that offer. On arrival, I found John working away in his tightly packed workshop. The space is filled with tools, gearbox housings and gears – lots and lots of gears. As I arrived, John was putting the finishing touches on a Moss Box for a Jaguar XK120 (see the photo above). Further back on the bench sat an Austin 7 engine that John is rebuilding for a bloke. There were lots of interesting old car bits stacked on shelves and elsewhere around the workspace.

It is, however, the rebuilding of gearboxes that John is famous for. John makes his own gears and has been doing so for decades. As he talks, the conversation moves rapidly across time. We talk about everything from the peculiarities of various pre-war cars to a customer who came into the workshop twenty years ago to show John an MG gear that he brought back in his luggage from an MG specialist in England. Somewhat surprised to the see this particular gear had been privately imported from England into Australia, John pointed to a box of identical gears on his shelf. “Ahh” said the customer, “you buy yours from the same place”. “No”, said John, “the English specialists buy them from me”.

John’s pet hate appears to be people who press in bronze bushings in gearboxes where roller bearings should go. John was able to show me various shafts and gears that had been ruined by the use of bronze bushings. My favourite was one where a bronze bush had seized and the shaft had to be cut to remove it. If the adjacent bush had seized instead, removal would have been next to impossible, even with the shaft cut.

John has an encyclopeadic knowledge of old car gearboxes. He has years of experience with the minor differences between models and was able to quickly show me how things changed over the years.  For example, in the midst of our conversation, John reached for a layshaft out of an MGTC (engine size 1250 cc). It was quite sizeable. He then invited me to compare it to the same part from an MGTD (also 1250 cc). The latter was about two thirds the size of the TC equivalent and about the size I would have expected. John then compared the TD shaft and gears with the same part from a 1250 cc Mini Cooper. It was significantly smaller again. It was interesting to see how much more compact, and probably less robust, the gearboxes became over time. The weight of the cars had remained fairly consistent, the engine output had grown modestly, but the gears of these three cars had become much smaller with each generation.

John knows from decades of experience the weaknesses of various gearbox designs. He likes to create his own improvements, such as the close ratio gearboxes for which he is well known. In addition, John has developed clever solutions to a wide range of difficult gearbox problems. For example, he makes his own reverse lock out springs that are much stronger than those used by others. This is important in boxes that have reverse located on the gate close to another gear, such as first. Demonstrating on the Moss box he was finishing off, John showed me how a weak horizontal detent spring can not only allow accidental selection of reverse, it can also cause a car to get stuck in reverse. This seemed counter intuitive until he showed me that, to ensure that a Moss box can be shifted from reverse, the horizontal spring must work in concert with the vertical detent spring that I did not even know existed.

Even more impressively, John has developed gears that use the driving force to lock into each other, only allowing movement for disengagement when the load is released by the throwing of the clutch.

John is one of those people who enjoys a challenge and is passionate about old cars. He works for a clientele who value his skill and his passion. John Needham can be contacted at Old Car Gearboxes on  +61 3 9553 3203.