Buckler gears

My old friend Derek Buckler has poioted out to me a piece of careless writing in my article Lotus Salad which might be construed as an unkind crack about his gears if the reader was unfamiliar with what went on inside a Ford gearbox.

I said that “The Buckler high second gear kept jumping out.” What I should have said was that the synchromesh teeth actuating the Buckler high second gear kept jumping out. The synchromesh mechanism is standard Ford. When I pointed out to the Ford people that eight thousand five hundred miles, which was all the gearbox had done, was rather a short life for a synchromesh, they replied that they could accept no responsibility as we had fitted a non-standard second speed.–David Scott Moncrieff.