I’ve made a bit of a cock up with my BE3 rebuild which I’ve built for my 405 XU10J4RS project.

I took the original 1.6 gearbox and rebuilt it with shafts from a Xsara VTS for more desirable ratios. Everything fitted up great, and ran fine up on axle stands. Very quickly on the road the gearbox started to make horrendous noises. It would do this in neutral with the clutch engaged suggesting input shaft bearings. I did not re-shim the donor shaft for this box, which I think has been a terrible mistake. I’ve dropped the oil and it’s nice and sparkly My thinking is that the bearings have been far too tight and started to destroy themselves.

I now have the box out and on the bench ready to strip tomorrow night. I’m thinking of replacing the bearings on the input shaft, giving everything a decent clean, and shimming it properly.

So:

Does my theory about shimming sound correct?

Will the box survive if cleaned properly and shimmed correctly?

Where can I get information about setting the shim? I hear early 205 Haynes have it, but is the process simple enough someone can just tell me? The information doesn’t seem to be readily available.

Apologies for the not strictly speaking GTI question