Technical Hydraulic throwout bearing

I have a Howe hydraulic throwout bearing in my 29 pickup. It has only a couple thousand miles on it and it is getting very noisy. I squirted some oil on it, noise went away for about 10 miles, then came back. It is a big job to get the trans out, and I was hoping for an easier, somewhat temporary remedy. Has anyone had one of these bearings apart? are the bearings rollers or ball bearings? I was thinking of drilling a small hole in the outer bearing shell and pumping in some wheel bearing grease. Next I would cover the hole with some J B weld or Marinetex to keep the grease in. Any creative ideas would be greatly appreciated, let me know what you guys think. Thanks Rich

 

Have you spoken to anyone at Howe about the problem?
I would think that if you were to drill and tap a hole for a grease fitting and then pump in a SMALL amount of a "tacky" high pressure grease that might work.
KK

 

Howe's are one of the best. Did you call them? Don't sit at a light with it in.

 

Those Hydraulic throw out bearings are a hit and a miss sometimes there perfect and other times they fucking suck. I've had pretty good results with Mcleods throw out bearing on several 324 olds/ chevy t5 combos they work like a charm. But i've also had issues with the o- rings being pinched...

 

Howe and Quartermaster used to make great ones years ago, now quality seems to be spotty. This is why I use an external slave, easier to see what's going on and easy to replace over a hydraulic TOB.

 

^^^^^^^ditto
Lots of info here on this subject. If you took a poll, HTOB's are a great concept but highly failure prone! Been there, done that.

 

I called Howe the other day, very nice gentleman listened carefully to my situation and my intended temporary fix. He said he knew of someone who did the exact thing, only instead of grease he used a Teflon lubricant, lasted for years. I tried to drill a hole in the outside diameter face of my throwout bearing, the drill sailed thru the outer sheetmetal case, different story when I hit the outer race, inside,. this thing is hard,hard,hard! Burned up all my hardened 1/8th dill bits, barely made a dent in the bearing race. I cant see cobalt bits doing much better. Looks like I am going to have to pull the trans out sometime. By the way the howe guy gave me the part # of just the bearing itself, with out the hydraulic assembly, got to be a lot less money. Thanks guys Rich