TO bearing issue

[DRJDVM's '69]

I swear to God my car is cursed....and people wonder why it's taken me so long to build my Cuda. I've had the transmission in/out going on 4 times now

The latest issue.... took the car to a local car show. Long line to get in so it was stop and go for a good 1/3 mile. By the time I got in, there was smoke under the car and it smelled like clutch.... bad..... couldn't really find the source but I thought I had overheated the clutch with stop and go.... its only got about 125 miles on a new McLeod twin disk. Got it parked and just hung out for the day. On leaving everything felt fine.... no more smoke, seemed to drive ok too.

Got the car home and next day got in up in air and there was fluid all over the bellhousing and the clutch master was down a good 3/4 inch. Looks like the TO puked fluid out the bell and the header, thus creating the smoke and smell.

So somehow I caused the TO to puke fluid... all I can think of is that I either didn't set the clutch pedal stop right and over extended the pedal a bunch of times in the stop and go traffic and blew the seal..... or I screwed up the TO to clutch air gap and over extended the bearing in some way.....

I must have checked both of those like 100 times.... but thats the only things I can think of to make a TO puke fluid

So.... all apart AGAIN.... TO bearing doesn't look jacked up ....Craig at Bowler had me send it back so they can inspect and rebuild

Clutch has some hot spots on the pressure plate so that's on the way back to McLeod to see if I ruined my $800 new clutch or it can be salvaged. Figured the hot spots are from the clutch slipping when the TO gave up and then wasn't fully releasing the disk

Any other ideas on how a TO would puke fluid? The lines are fine... so signs it rubbed a hole etc, so it must have come from the piston seal

This car has fought me this entire build.....

[camcojb]

A friend had a similar issue, and it turned out to be the T/O bearing fluid line was close to the headers, and was overheating the fluid. He re-routed the line and never had the issue again.

[DRJDVM's '69]

My lines are pretty far away from any heat source. I have them zip tied pretty good but I'll keep that in mind when I put it all back together to be sure

[Vegas69]

It seems like it could be heat related due to the heak soak you likely experienced. If it was me, I'd consider having another set of eyes look things over before it goes back together. You have to be missing something.

[DRJDVM's '69]

TO bearing was checked by Bowler and nothing obvious on the seal. Rebuilt it anyway since I'm 99% sure the fluid puked from there

McLeod looked at clutch and the disks were fried, and mid plate warped. I have a feeling that happened after the TO died on me and the disk wasn't fully releasing when the clutch was depressed, so it was slipping like crazy and torched the disk. The clutch is rebuilt and on the way back to me

Its got to be the throw on the pedal.....

[camcojb]

Its got to be the throw on the pedal.....

Good thought. :thumbsup:

[DRJDVM's '69]

Sent the TO to Bowler- nothing obvious but rebuilt it anyway...

Clutch to McLeod..... disks were torched and the mid plate was heated and warped. They rebuilt it..... and all under warranty, despite this likely being something on my end... shout to McLeod for great customer support

Got it all back together... spending a ton of time of getting the TO air gap right at .125 per Tilton.

So it all back together.... bled the hell out of the whole system, both power bleeder and the old fashion way. And I still cant get the clutch to release trying to set the stop.

Plugged the feed line off the slave and the pedal is like a rock....so I don't think its the slave.

The pedal feels pretty decent and I can see it move the TO bearing forward. I just don't think its generating enough pressure to push the clutch finger in

All I can think of is the pedal throw. Its got an adjustable link, so I can thread it farther/less onto the slave rod and then adjust the how far the link its into the center piece to start, then tweak the pedal height.

Trying wrap my head around the physics to maximize the throw. The slave rod is essentially static, while I can make the heim joint that attaches to the pedal be in/or more on the center piece to start. Once its together I can rotate the center section to fine tune the pedal height.

If its not the pedal travel, I'm stumped on what else to troubleshoot at this stage

[dontlifttoshift]

What is the total travel on the throw out bearing?

With everything installed, what is the distance from the clutch fingers to fully compressed on the throw out bearing. In other words, where in the total travel does the bearing sit at idle?

How much bearing travel does it take to fully release the clutch?

What master cylinder are you using and how is it mounted? What is the bore size?

[dontlifttoshift]

...double post

[DRJDVM's '69]

Its a Tilton 6000 series hydraulic TO bearing

Per the Tilton instructions I set the air gap at 0.125.... I can see in the bell the TO is slightly pushed out from fully compressed... I can reach in and full push it back in. When I depress the clutch you can see the TO extend out

T75-750U 3/4 bore compact master cylinder, per my purchase invoice...

RST twin disk clutch

Based on the Tilton sheet, with lever style clutch and a 3/4 bore slave, the master cylinder stroke is supposed to be 1.4 inches.... with a diagram type clutch its 1.1 inches

All the stuff worked before I had the blow out. The only thing that may be different is the clutch rod length. The upper heim didn't have a jam nut and it didnt fee like it had much thread engage so it had a bit of wobble to it, so I pulled it all out, and screwed the heim in father then reattached everything and then adjust the pedal height. But all that should do is move the center adjustment piece up and down on the threads... it shouldn't effect the throw on the slave, unless I'm not thinking about this right

It all worked before.... so something is different now...

[DRJDVM's '69]

Well no matter what I did it wouldn't build enough pressure to release the clutch.

With it in gear up on jack stands it had some intermittent knocking in the bellhousing too. I did not have the flywheel balanced to the new clutch, but did to the old one.... not sure if that's the noise, it would come and go a bit. I had a post awhile back about it sounding "off" with some rattling before but everyone said it was typical for the T56 gears to make some noise.

So all apart... AGAIN..... get it apart and there's some fluid on underside of the TO and the bellhousing has fluid in it..... so it looks like the rebuilt TO bearing is still leaking. Bowler did not find a leak before... rebuilt it anyway and checked again with no leaks. No clue how much pressure they put to it, but its for sure leaking and wont build pressure to release the clutch....

Not happy...... doing this on my back in 90+ degree heat is so much fun.

On the upside.... it wasn't something I jacked up... NOT MY FAULT!!!

Going to get the flywheel and clutch balanced together.... with the transmission out yet again I'm tempted to have it upgraded....maybe Bowler Stage II upgrade....

So much for GoodGuys in 2 weeks