I bought a cheap Fairey overdrive a week or so back and I am just replacing the worn/broken parts. It was the usual of the clutch sleave and main shaft chewed up so not that hard to do. I am now at the final stage, less the selector fork, of putting it back together and have hit a snag. There I was all smug with just 3 more bits to go on and OH the first circlip on the shaft wont go on! What I mean is the groove for that first (thick I think) circlip is hidden under the radial bearing but only by the thickness of the thrust bearing washer bit. Bit of a head scratcher as it all came off. I will go outside and swear at it a bit more and see if that helps!

Yep, walking away from a problem and coming back later often helps. [ and a curse or two to let off steam ]

Mine was like that when i stripped it. The main bearing was not pressed home against its shoulder. I put the shaft in the freezer for a day and popped the new bearing in a plastic bag and dropped it in a pan of boiling water. A big vice and a short piece of scaffold tube did the job.

have you downloaded this? http://www.lrsoc.com/forum/forum_files/Overdrive Repair and Service Manual.pdf

Update on the overdrive and it's back together except for the selector shaft because I split one of the o rings! When I was rebuilding I was doing it wtih the housing propped up on wooden blocks and a few washers to get the height right. After much swearing and inventing a few new swear words and an olympic level spanner throw I discovered that the height wasnt, infact, correct. The reason that I managed to go from not being able to see the circlip groove to almost beeing to get it on was because every time I moved the overdrive the pile of wood would fall over and would get rebuilt slightly differntly each time. On the final attempt I think the super cooling effect I was getting on my brain in 3.0C temps made me get a screwdriver and pop it under the outter gear, the big one that sticks out the front of the OD unit, and twist it. AND up it popped ready for the circlip! What an utter huntingdon ram nugget, i didnt say the swear words were any good! Just waiting for the new o-ring kit to finish it off. I'm just going to check the end float as I put in more shims than I took out because the shim I took out wasnt really a shim anymore as it had split and was working its way out, it was quite chewed up!