I’ve just finished putting the car back together, and I’m pleased to report a full recovery. Gear changes are once again quiet; the faint ‘clonk’ has now departed.

I’m disappointed I didn’t take more photos. When things start going wrong it’s easy to forget to document stuff. The removed part looked like this:

The new part can be seen in the corner of this photo:

This goes between the gearbox output shaft and the prop shaft, and provides a valuable bit of shock absorption. Here’s a good example of how a worn item breaks down – picture stolen from Andy Eccles’ excellent post on the matter.

The issue I had was that one of those bolts pictured above had become seized in the end of the propshaft. In the photograph below you can see the extent Alex and I had to go to in order to get it out. The 6 mm hole in the middle was drilled by me on Sunday. The next circular cross section is the bolt itself. The outer ring is a sleeve from the old donut. This piece was removed from the end of the prop shaft. Quite something!

When it came to test driving this evening, I had almost forgotten about the new brakes. I’ve bedded those in nicely – I’d forgotten what it feels like to have straight brake discs! So we’re pretty much there now, with a couple of exceptions. While at BMW today collecting the new bolts I also grabbed a replacement oil separator. When I get a chance I’ll look at fitting this, and straightening the exhaust that just doesn’t look quite right at the moment. This will have to wait though – I’ve got a stag weekend to attend to this weekend, and there’s a rally I want to see the weekend after.