Thread: THE CRASH GEAR BOX

pfft....

get it moving in first or second low, bring it up to mid rpm, slip shift low-high and keep on going.

after the daisy chain of failures I had on the stupid clutch in fozzy I must have driven for nearly 3 months without a clutch.

Originally Posted by JDNSW

Not quite. One of the vehicles I learnt to drive on was a T Ford. Two forward and reverse. High is direct drive, through a multiplate oil bath clutch. Low and reverse are planetary and engaged by oil bath brake bands.

The handbrake has a cam that disengages the clutch as it is pulled on. The LH pedal also disengages the clutch and when full down engages low. The centre pedal engages reverse, but note that the clutch must be disengaged, either by half depressing the LH pedal or pulling the handbrake half on. The RH pedal is the foot brake, operating on a third brake band in the gearbox. The entire gearbox and clutch works are mounted on the flywheel, which has round its periphery a row of V shaped magnets that are both the magneto, providing AC power for the ignition coils and lighting, and also act as the oil pump; The 'sump' is the flywheel housing, and oil flung up by the magnets is caught by a funnel which has an inclined pipe feeding oil to the timing case, whence, after lubricating the timing gears, it runs down the bottom plate of the crankcase, filling the troughs for each big end on the way, and back to the flywheel housing.

As a standard fitting there is no foot accelerator, all driving uses the hand throttle lever, the LH one on the steering column. The other lever is the spark timing, which needs a lot more adjustment than for most ignition systems, as the trembler coils impose a relatively long time delay on spark, so as the engine speeds up you need to advance the spark. And with hand starting, heaven help you if you fail to retard it before cranking! If you fail to advance it at speed, apart from the loss of power, you will be able to see at night, even with out the headlights, by the glow of the exhaust manifold shining through the radiator!

The ignition switch has three positions - battery, used for starting, off, and Magneto, used for normal driving, changeover after the engine is running. In theory you can start on magneto, but I have never managed it. You can also start it by turning over four compressions while holding the choke out (choke lever is at the bottom driver's side of the radiator, where you can operate it with your left hand wjhile cranking with your right), then turn the ignition to battery and slowly advance the spark.

John

I recall my father saying cranking a Model T in a garage was "interesting"

Invariably, the bands were never perfectly adjusted & would drag slightly in neutral. So, fire it up, it creeps forward, & you'd be pinned against the garage wall by the tyres etc.

Regards
Max P

Originally Posted by JDNSW

Operate the starter with it in first/low range, change up through the gears to fourth, then change the transfer case to high, preferably doing a split shift to third in the main box. Interesting in peak hour traffic!

John

Had to do all this in a Disco 1 with LT77 in the city a while back. Kept in High range though. Still worked.
People did wonder why I snuck up to red lights slowly hoping they would change before I had to stop.
Didiman

Originally Posted by Tusker

I recall my father saying cranking a Model T in a garage was "interesting"

Invariably, the bands were never perfectly adjusted & would drag slightly in neutral. So, fire it up, it creeps forward, & you'd be pinned against the garage wall by the tyres etc.

Regards
Max P

This effect depended on how good the handbrake was. Since the car used pressed steel brake drums of about jam tin thickness, and cast iron shoes, applying the handbrake while moving almost invariably meant the drums expanded and the handbrake never worked again until adjusted.

The drag was mainly from the clutch that engaged top rather than the indirect gears, where low and reverse drag would tend to cancel out, and was very temperature dependent - remember, oil bath clutch and no multigrade oil. In freezing conditions, jacking up one rear wheel was usually necessary before you could even turn the engine.

A further comment - both low and reverse gears, while constant mesh, were straight cut and hence not exactly quiet.

John

Originally Posted by JDNSW

A further comment - both low and reverse gears, while constant mesh, were straight cut and hence not exactly quiet.

That noise is the signature of a 'T'.

I was working up country on top of a roof at one of my VSAT installations, when I heard someone going flat out along the road on what I thought was a tractor,
then it swung at a leisurely pace into the yard of the farm house where I was working and I could see then it was a fully restored late model, model T.
.

Originally Posted by JDNSW

This effect depended on how good the handbrake was. Since the car used pressed steel brake drums of about jam tin thickness, and cast iron shoes, applying the handbrake while moving almost invariably meant the drums expanded and the handbrake never worked again until adjusted.

John

Not just on "T's". When I was a teenager I had a 1934 Ford ute made from a tourer. A day's hard use (or a night's street racing) meant adjusting the brakes again. Not that the brakes were much good even when properly adjusted. Ford didn't go to hydraulic brakes until 1938 or 1939.

A friend has several T's restored and has dabbled in them for about thirty years. He says he can't imagine using one in heavy traffic. He reckons the driver would be very busy. His current project is restoring a Frontenac twin cam T racer from the 1930's which has a flywheel, clutch, and three speed box from a 1932 Ford A. Brakes are two wheel mechanical operating on the rear wheels by a choice of pedal or hand lever. So, essentially little or no brakes.

Originally Posted by Blknight.aus

pfft....

get it moving in first or second low, bring it up to mid rpm, slip shift low-high and keep on going.

I must have driven for nearly 3 months without a clutch.

Not good apparently for a sincro box .. But is the way to go for the crunch box

Same result ... less leg muscles

Originally Posted by 101 Ron

All I know if you stuff up a gear change and want the whole world to know about it , do it on a Two speed diff.

Yep some of the old fire trucks had 'em.Don't you learn quickly how to count to three before hitting that button,nothing like neutralizing on the way to a job...bloody embarrassing .