I rebuilt quite a few gearboxes in my time , MGB, MGA, mini, Valiant, 400 turbo-hydramatic, FIAT2300S, 124, 124sport AC but not the BC and found that MGs were crap, the Mini crap, the 400 strong but slow. The FIAT gearboxes were beautifully made , precise and way better than the Ferrari gearboxes in that they were never baulking cold, they had the same smoothness hot or cold. Ferraris 'boxes are great hot but still no match for the box out of the 2300
I only wrecked the E49 box, it had weak bearings, the rest I rebuilt while doing the engines I never learnt, I would lose one of the springs and ball bearings for the selectors EVERY time
So That brings the tally to........ 308 Brake repairs- Rooted Gearbox repairs- Rooted Tyre pressure maintenance ..........Rooted That's the 3 again! F111's ????
You've never owned a car with a Ferrari gearbox. You've had cars with ZF internals. The last Ferrari gearbox was in the 365GT 2+2, after that Ferrari only made the casings, a Fiat cost rationalisation decision.
Some shots from a Darwin exercise in '80 Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Actually the engine was pulled out to get a bolt that had fallen into the engine from the rudder transducer Hard to believe the following pics are 34 years old Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Still can't believe how ungainly and weird those things looked with unswept wings (especially with that funny main gear profile) and how fast and generally excellent they looked clean at full sweep!
Bloody dangerous to work around, running or not ....... quite a few people sliced their heads open on the rear stabs
John- Easy to believe 34 years. Just had a reunion of the 522 TFS, an F-111D unit at Cannon AFB, New Mexico. I showed up there in May 1974, over 40 years ago. Great photos.
We did Giant Voice with quite a few of the Cannon guys at Mt Home in '80 and '82, were you amongst them ?
Story time. Whilst I was never lucky (/unlucky) enough to work on one, my earliest really clear memory involves an F-111. It was 1988, and I was on a grade 4 excursion to the Fremantle Maritime Museum. At lunchtime we went off to a fish and chip shop a couple of minutes' walk away, adjacent to a tiny stretch of beach between the main (large ship) harbour and the smaller fishing boat one. After lunch all the kids in my class tootled down to the beach itself and started splashing around in the water for a bit, whilst I, unable to swim (still can't!) and as little a fan of beaches then as I am now, stayed back up on the paved area reading a book and generally trying to ignore the kids who were laughing at me for not joining in. A short while later, I heard something rumbling and looked up to try to figure out what it was. Within a few seconds, an F-111 at what I'm sure was a nice safe altitude and distance offshore but looked to 8y.o. me like about 50ft right over the beach, came from behind a building, banking hard left along the shoreline with wings at full sweep, making the loudest roar I had ever heard and looking like it was going about Mach 15. Immediately after that, a much larger than usual wave showed up and utterly soaked everybody standing knee-deep in the water - I'm sure the plane just distracted everyone enough that they all failed to notice it coming in, but at the time it felt like it had actually caused the wave through sheer speed/power/noise/angriness. Everybody who'd been laughing at me was now wet and upset, whilst I sat on a ledge dry and laughing uproariously. I didn't even know what sort of aircraft it was at the time (though I soon went and looked it up), and I still have no idea what a solo F-111 was doing there, but I didn't care - I decided that day that planes were excellent, and Air Force planes were the most excellent of all, ready to come lend a hand when one is needed TL;DR - Pig makes teasing kids STFU, gains admirer-for-life.
John- No, had been at Fighter Weapon School at Mt Home in late 79, but was at Lakenheath flying F-111Fs from Jan 1980-Oct 1983. I was in Giant Voice in 1978. You have probably seen this, but pretty disgusting for all us Aardvark types. F111 Disposal from Thiess Pty Ltd on Vimeo
You would have liked the scene the 111s caused in Townsville in '79 when they took off for home. They went 30-40 kms inland then turned back towards the airfield , swept the wings back all the way, dropped to 100' and then pulled a 3G pull up over us (I was in the ATC tower) and disappeared into water vortexes the shape of a white disc ..... I'm sure someone would have thought they were UFOs as there was NO plane to be seen, just 3 discs disappearing at mach 1.2 The air force had to pay for 200 chickens that died for that little stunt so I made up a sticker for the 3 aircraft with the number 200 between 2 cickens
Did you get to eat the chickens? I was at the airshow at Edinburgh in the early 80s(?) when a Mirage accidentally broke the sound barrier causing massive damage to the surrounding area (there are many many greenhouses around the field - lots of glass etc.) I think the pilot got in a lot of poo over that. I remember seeing the little vortex of disturbed air passing from the nose to the tail as it happened. Very cool, and who cares about a few greenhouses?
Was probably one of those dopes from 77 squadron, they were the wildest bunch of ratbags I ever encountered in the RAAF. Was the plane painted in the red/white and blue livery ? I could tell a few stories about the 77 boys but I think the funniest one was when the 111s and the 77 Mirage boys were in Darwin and we all refused to let the pub on the base close and the OC turned up and called us all sheep .... the 77 squadron boys started bleating and jumping around like sheep and then told the OC to FO .... he returned with the MPs
Mt Home was a funny place, red, green and blue squadrons from memory and I remember asking a crew chief how many aircraft, he said something like 300, and I then asked how many serviceable, he said six The security guys there were told to give the Aussies some latitude if we "accidently" crossed the "100' fence" , you would know, the thick wire with rubber donuts on the edge of the revetment area. I remember teasing the security guys when doing the LDBO refills in the early hours of the morning by putting my foot over the wire and they would just pat there guns as a reminder The pub on the way to the base put on a feed of grizzly bear and rattler snake for us one night ..... all tasted like chicken to me after the 50th beer
