well as I wait for the machine shop to get to my 8BA and t give my C0BA a bath I'm looking at my trans situation. I have a '53-54 truck trans as well as a '40 passenger car trans and a '49-52 (?) passenger car trans. I was told th e'40 had LZ gears; how do I check that? The gear closest to the fron of the box has a missing tooth (called dentist and he was of no help at all!) and some wear on the idler gear as well as what I think is second gear. Are there any parts in the truck and '49-52 transmissions that I can use? Bear in mind I'm going for a torque tube system and not open drive. Car is a '32 5W. Thanks!
I will be buying his books ok but just now with the border closed I am not able to get to my US mailbox. What this means is that with the currency exchange and the shipping that book will be close to $80+ CDN so I'll be holding off for awhile. Right now I'm looking for info from the collective experience of the mighty HAMB!
I’m sure I will suffer some not so kind words from early Ford fanaticsbut in the early 70’s I built a hot t bucket roadster pickup with a 276 in flathead. Every time I went for a shakedown cruise,and pushed the car, I would limp home with either 2nd gear or cluster gear broken. I went thru 6 early Ford trans in 2 1/2 months. The early Ford trans was only built to accommodate 100-125 hp and now they are 70-80 years old and are weak to say the least. I went to a Muncie 4 spd and 9 in Ford rear end—-ended my problems Forever. Yes, I have a heavy foot, but you spend good money on worn out CHIT and you will be forever “scared” to attack the throttle. My 32 cabriolet(Henry car) runs 80 in the 1/8 mile and it wouldn’t do those speeds with an early Ford trans and rear end. Just my own opinion. Flatheads Forever!I am sure there are exceptions to my thinking it I don’t like inferior or worn out parts.NUF SED!
Well thanks for that and I'm well aware of the limits of an old time trans. Now back to regular scheduled programming/topic at hand...
Unfortunately the trans with the missing tooth is most likely junk . So what happens is the tooth gets knock off and gets tossed around and usually takes out other gears. It also may have compromised other that you can’t see with the naked eye. You can swap out the gears from another trans such as the truck or car. The truck with the open drive will have a different main shaft for the open end for the yoke I recommend taking it apart and access the condition. As Flatheadjohn said some did get abused so inspection and rebuild is recommended. The trans is pretty straight forward and pretty easy. Mr Van Pelts book is great and also a great source for parts and a great guy to do business with. When you do take the trans apart please don’t mix the parts with other transmissions the have different gear tooth counts depending the year and application.
I went and checked the gear at the front of the imput shaft and it has 18 teeth and the front gear on the gear cluster has 26 teeth. So it looks like I have the LZ set. I'll be dealing with Van Pelt as I need a second gear as there is some wear as well as the 18 tooth gear on th imput shaft. All his will be behind a warmed up 8BA with three 97s (though may block off two of them) on an Fenton intake, original Eddie Meyer heads, and a Merc crank sitting in a '32 5W. I presume this will be ok but first I have to check the rear end ratio.
Here are some pics of main shaft, second gear, and idler gear... The abuse on the second and idler gears leads me to this question, cane the damage simply be carefully filed away since it seems to be relatively minor without any big chunks out like the mainshaft or do I hunt down replacements. And don't forget my earlier question as to running LZ gears with my particular vehichle described in my previous post.
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