Curious bearings

I think I found the actual, definitive source of my gearbox noise. The input shaft here is locked in place and does not spin against the main shaft when in 4th gear. Here are the bearings where it rotates when in any gear other than 4th...where is the bearing cage??

Here are eleven roller bearings around the drive shaft. The input shaft is in my left hand which sits over these roller bearings.

There is a hard plastic residue sprayed all over the underside of the input shaft. Was this a plastic bearing cage?? Did the transmission massively overheat at some point?

Part 43: "Pilot Bearing"
Part 42: "Input shaft"

The image shows a bearing assembly with cage.

edit: I got a metal cage (h suffix) replacement for ~$12 from Bearing Wholesalers. Ford were charging $95 for the plastic cage TN version. :(

45th Birthday...so old

I had a chocolates pig-out at work, then continued the trend with a belly-busting KFC lunch...so full...

Then shot down to the chinese tool warehouse near work and grabbed some bits with Jana's $$ present. This year it was a few different medium/small gear pullers. Though I don't actually need these NOW, I did need these style when I was disassembling the van gearbox during the last fortnight.

Mum baked some chocolate cupcakes that I'll secretly scoff down when nobody is looking later this evening.

Pixie helped with the birthday cheer.

Storm Trooper Bowl

Finally finished the Storm Trooper Bowl.

I decided to varnish this one instead of oiling, however I had some very old ordinary varnish and the 3rd and 4th coats went horribly wrong. The solvent for whatever reason wrecked the previous layers and I ended up with a gummy mess that wouldn't cure.

So I spent two afternoons trying to get varnish off of an intricate bowl...this was a horrible horrible horrible job. The end result isn't as nice as I'd like...I got sick of re-working what I'd already done. :( There are tool marks all over it, however I'm done with sanding!

So back to oil.

The others are a couple years old now, so got a re-coating also.