My first car was an HQ ute, 3 speed Impala shift, there were not many others who could change from 1st to 2nd without causing a major lockup.

I also have a story about the old "first and reverse" lock up scenario with a four speed ( different HQ ute but 15 years later) .
It just happened to be at a boat ramp retrieving a tinny and the weight of the car rolling back made it impossible to get out of reverse until the car's weight was taken off the gearbox. The tide was coming in of course and there's a heap more to this story and the panic that followed but I managed to get towed out by a V8 Range Rover and it's ten foot tall driver (he'd had a few rums).

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Quote Originally Posted by HK1837 View Post
One thing i'll give them is they are easy to rebuild, I used to do a few of them. At least I thought they were easy, till I built a Muncie. Then I realised that the aussie 4spd is like a scale model of a real gearbox. On a muncie you stick 2 fingers down the layshaft tunnel to put the needle rollers in place, and the needle rollers are like pencil size. You could break someone's skull with 1st gear rather than give someone a nasty scratch with an Aussie 1st. And the layshaft belongs in a porno, or on a donkey.
Can't the M21's internals be "worked" to house a donkey size layshaft, needle rollers etc?