grrrrr grrrrrr grrrrrr
___________
This is not off topic. I thought by now he must be dead and gone; after all, two years ago I cut myself off from all my real friends
because I just wasn't well and did not want to go visit Garland anymore, or anybody. I did not want to leave the house.
Two days ago the phone rang, "Hey, Reid? It's Garland Pobletts. How are you doing? We haven't heard from you and there's a car club dinner
tomorrow; maybe you can come with me and Marie?"
"Garland! You're alive!" "Why wouldn't I be?" "Still have the T?" "Yes, took it for the annual tour, up in Kentucky, this time (he tours with his club,
trailering one or the other of his old cars thousands of miles to the tour-place). Garland is going strong. So is his '15T touring that he has owned and
driven regularly, tens of thousands of miles, since 1957. Garland is ninety years old. He sounds to be just fine. No "grrrr grrrr grrrr".
Oh, how I remember his T. I've serviced its wear-able bands more than once. Garland likes the old style cotton lamp wick type of friction bands,
but they do burn out in a few thousand miles. Yet, Garland's Ford is the quietest running I've ever seen, despite its near-century of service.
T Planetary: The flywheel's rear face bears three stout steel pins. The pins are hard steel, press fit, just so, into the cast iron.
The flywheel runs in oil, dips into the oil sump, constantly wetting itself and the planet pins.
The planets are spur-cut, heat-treated, vanadium steel. They bear bronze bushes, flanged, press fitted, and are a rather loose running fit on the pins,
because
In the heat of an engine, bronze holes grow smaller by quite an amount, whilst the steel pins hardly "fatten" at all.
The gears contstantly spin all the time that the engine is in idle (a couple hundred or so rpm) or in "low" gear.
Only when the car is in its other gear, "high gear" (which is direct drive, no "gear" at all except in the distant rear axle), do the planetaries not spin;
instead they serve to transmit all the power, three spur teeth of steel, to the drive shaft.
Ford planets of steel and their bushings of a very, very particular grade of bronze, run in oil. The gears never, ever break.
Rarely, original bushings wear out to such an extent that the gear meshing is messy, and so, the bushings get replaced.
Then the car is liable to sound at idle, or in low gear, like a coffee mill. Mr T owner of today cannot buy original Ford replacement bushings.
He buys repro bushings. The bronze ain't the same. His machinist reams for what is to be a "proper fit", and knows his onions.
Mr. T owner gets his engine back, refits the engine, takes a first drive and notes "she don't run so sweet sounding as before".
He takes a run up 8% grade Bollocks Hill. He is gonna break in the new bushings, really easy-like.
So he's in low pedal low gear. The planetaries are spinning. Their oil-bathed bronze bushings are doing well, but heating....
and then the lose their oil clearance. One, two or three instantly SEIZE and stall the engine. End of that story.
Garland's old T, old bushings, makes nearly now transmission noise at all. "Reid, you gotta come up, now that you say you are feeling better,
and we'll pull the T out of the garage and you'll go drive it with me?" "I don't know, Garland. I almost died in my own car's death-accicent."
I am an ex-T man now." "I got'cha, Reid. But the offer stands, you know? It'd be good to see you again." The times we had.
As stated, Garland is ninety. He has been driving antique cars since before I was born. He's as fresh and unstripped of mental gear teeth as ever.
-------------
Moral: Metal gears are grand. But they may or may not make a hell of a racket (not even your perfectionist machinist can predict in advance)
Loose bushings -should- guarantee odd and terrible gear noises. But, no. They guarantee plentiful OIL supply to the pinion posts,
and guarantee that each of the three planet teeth (we have ONLY three teeth, at best, in contact, carrying load, at any one time).
POINT: A model T transmission's planet-circle is not large; it works within the orbit described by a nine inch sun gear inside of a cast iron "low speed" drum.
IT SPINS FAST; if you race the idling engine to 2,000 rpm, the velocity of those planets is pretty damn high.
THE TORQUE on those teeth is tremendous: about 90 foot pounds can be applied in service (I am guesstimating numbers here).
IT ALL RUNS IN OIL, ALL OF THE TIME.
Point: metal to metal gearing that runs "fast" and for "long" is by far better off it it can be run in oil instead of mere grease.
But oil is hardly an option for most, leaky gear cases or other special cases.
-------
The Timing Gear of the T (this is not off topic).
I will continue this "lecture" at another time. I'm like, in geezer mode now, snorting derision at "kiddies" thinking that aluminum gears, greased,
are a good wearing thing against tool steel. I doubt it, but can only cite theoretical "no no" reasons. And what really frosts my Mr. Wilson (Dennis' neighbor, remember?)
HOW THE HELL do you who thinks "I'm running one metal and two plastic planets and its just great" plan to walk get home some distant day when your
one-effective-load bearing tooth of (aluminummmmm) busts the eff off, and "peanut butters" your dummy, plastic gears? You might as well leave OUT
the plastic gears. They do nothing if you have a metal planet, or the planet does nothing if you have one or two plastic planets in there;
There is no way, Dennis, that you can mix the races (you see its a figure of speech) and have them all shoulder the bails equal-like).
"Mr. Wilson", old grump, now tells "Dennis" to go back home and leave him be with his single malted, "It's time for my iced tea, young man. Go home now."
----------------
Garland Pobletts rang me the other day...... "Reid how are you, we've been worried about you....."
"Are you still working, Garland? I had to quit working myself ten years ago."
"Yeah, I still work two days, doin' that courier work for the company (he ferries vital documents by hand, internationally).
Garland does not rock. He flies, twice per week, aged ninety. Reid only ha-rumphs at a bunch of silly talk in this thread.
It's not that Reid (I use the "third person" for the Queen Victoria-imperious effect) is all correct and infallable.
We are hardly that. But we knows our onions, pretty well, in general. Just don't ask me to hob a tooth or do machine work.
I'm no machinist at all; just a mechanic who fits and fixes and breaks and fixes things, and needs to be left alone now with his iced tea,
just for a spell.
Goodbye now, Dennis-es. Bring your red wagon over some other time? I'll let you clear the cellar of cinders and pay you a quarter.
And I'll tell you of the T's original-type of timing gear, direct driven from the hairpin-crankshaft's, whippy, front end. It is helical cut, a "silent" gear,
but in practice, it is never silent at all. So the aftermarket makers came up with a composite material, starting in 1920, that was truly silent.
This composite, plastic gear, lasted well in good installations. If you can find an NOS silent T timing gear, use it: it's still as strong as new.
It is made of solid linen cloth layers, laminated in Bakelite resin, layers going every which-way, all unitized, then machined from the raw blanks.
And they don't require much lube at all, and they are pure silent, and strong as steel in service.
Today we have some super-tough "reinforced" gear plastics. And I suppose (my "tea is half drunk now) that gears of even this new "improved?"
plastic, would serve a 150 volted Bafang without ever a ba-BANG.
Dialectial materialism-speech, Reid style: "DO THE BURFANG MOTOR PUT OUT NINETY FOOT POUNDS OF TORQUE? DO IT WHIP AN' SNAP
LIKE THE HARMONIC VIBES OF A Ts whippy crankshaft? Do road shocks put to the drive wheel make back-shocks to three spur teeth, ever, sufficient
to snap or deform one tooth? When I break a tooth I go 'owwww'! When a planetary pencil sharpener mechanism gets even one tooth chip, the whole shebang goes BAFANG."
:wink:
but I will run it at 80V for a bit then open it up, clean out the moly grease and repack.
