Morris Minor Owners Club

My engine has a mechanical whine to it in 1st, 2nd and 3rd gears, but not in 4th.

When idling, the whine disappears when depressing the clutch. (What a choice! A whiny engine or a depressed clutch.)

Any ideas what's causing this, and how can it be resolved?

Thanks.

Are you sure it is the engine??
The engine doesn't know the difference between 3rd and 4th gear (i.e. if the noise is different then it's not neccessarily the engine)

Could the noises be from the gearbox? When you declutch when stationary, the gearbox input shaft can stop rotating (ie when declutched at stationary this can give no moving parts in the gearbox)

It is probably the gearbox.

When you are in fourth gear the input and output shafts of the gearbox are both rotating at the same speed.
In all other gears they are rotating at different speeds.

Try topping up the oil on the gearbox! My 4-door used to whine when the oil level was low. Fixing the leak and topping the oil up helped, as did gearbox slick50.

Aye - low oil level and/or worn layshaft and bearings. Adding any 'slippery' additive to a gearbox will reduce the effectiveness of any syncromesh !

surely oil is slippery, Roy?

surely oil is slippery, Roy?

he said slippery additive... The bearings need oil for lubrication, the synchros need to stick to the cones. It's always going to be a compromise but as modern oils have lots of nice additives already I'd rather just use oil as specified.

all right.. learnt something