Please enjoy looking through the story of the reassembly of a Bugatti Type 57S gearbox. The gearbox had been previously disassembled and left in this state for many years. I was given the challenge of returning it to a fully working gearbox, taking in the region of 140 hours.

The owner, Bill Turnbull had purchased a set of new gears from the Bugatti factory in Molsheim in the late 60’s. These gears you see in the pictures are the same gears with the addition of some modern Formula 1 processes. The teeth were carefully checked for burrs and any imperfections were dressed out with the aid of a very fine oil stone. In areas where Bugatti had not dressed all the edges of the teeth this was addressed and then they were all sent for shot peen and super finishing.

The cluster was assembled out of the casing using the rear selector housing to first see how the mainshaft gears lined up to the layshaft gears. There was an error which is fixed by changing the spacer on the mainshaft. The first motion shaft also required a shim between the gear and the bearing to bring the teeth into alignment. The last check is to see that when the gear is selected that it has a small gap between the dogs on the hub and the dogs on the gear to ensure that it will not be loaded up when in gear.