I think my gearbox is cursed

I set off this morning trying to do a simple job. Merely remove a dammaged speedometer drive cog, and replace with one from a spare gearbox.

By the time I'd finished, there was a trail of distruction round the workshop, it was dark outside, and Bitsa was on her 3rd transfer box in as many weeks.

Nothing would remove the old cog - it seemed glued to the shaft.
I hit it from various angles, attacked it with a selection of improvised pullers, and tried various other dodges before finally wielding the gas axe over it.

That got it off, but a slight slip of the wrist saw me nick the rear bearing on the back of the transfer box with the gas... so I needed to change the bearing.

A lot of huffing, puffing and further burning of pretty much everything including my fingers, saw the defenct bearing removed. So I just needed another bearing, and with the truck imobilised, I had to conjure one up on the spot. Simple I thought - I've the transfer box I took off a couple of weeks ago - the front bearing had failed, but the rear bearing was fine. So I got the old transfer box out of the scrap pile.

The bearing shifted about 1/2" down the shaft and stuck.
The shaft was floating round in the box, and it was almost impossible to get it held to hit the shaft back throught the bearing. In desperation, I cut the shaft in half inside the box with the gas, which left me the bearing on a bit of shaft I could get in the vice. With the bearing sat in the vice, I hit the shaft out of it. And with my final blow, managed to hit the bearing case rather than the shaft... destroying the roller cage.

Oh dear.

I still had one option left - there was an old gearbox from NOG kicking about. The main box was shot, but the transfer box was fine. I thought about extracting the bearing from it, and gave the matter a brief attempt. It didn't seem keen to shift, and given this was my last chance, I didn't feel inclinded to get too carried away, or get the gas out again.

So, I fitted NOG's old transfer box to Bitsa. Ironically, NOG is now running Bitsa's old gearbox and transfer case, which was all sat spare and in good order when her box packed up in March.

Still, I have got a working speedometer now. And it reads much higher than before - the old speedo drive must have been slipping before fusing with the output shaft on its demise...

In other news, I've still no roof on, topless week 3 comming up. Who say's we don't have summer in England. We just have it at a time most people would expect Autum.
HMRC have also finally cashed my cheque and sent me a receipt for the first batch of waste oil. I'm clearly unusual - the receipt in question has the reference no - WASTE002/09, which means I presume means that I'm one of two people currently burning waste oil as a motor fuel legally. (I now know of four or five people doing it undeclared, which is rather a different question... it seems old Pugeots run quite well on it cut 50/50 with diesel).