> I mounted the TO bearing to a new sleeve at the time. To install it, I
> used, believe it or not, TRF's front spring compressor tool in order to give
> the bearing the ability to spin whilst it was pushed on the nose of the
> sleeve. Went on with little effort.
Hmm, a leading TR authority advised me against pressing on the T/O bearing onto
the sleeve noting it is one of the reasons why they may fail. The solution then
was to throw the sleeve into the freezer for a day, and let the T/O bearing sit
atop a 75W lightbulb. Drop the heated T/O bearing over the frozen carrier
sleeve and they just slip together.
The story of my clutch problems...
I did my clutch the first time in May of 1999, pulled an all nighter in the
drive way, and at that time I replaced the clutch plate, the pressure plate, and
the throw-out bearing. The replacement parts were Borg & Beck, while the parts
I took out were the original Laycock items (car only had 74k miles then). The
tapered pin was not broken when I did this, so I left good enough alone.
Towards the end of summer though clutch problems began to arise again. I was
heading to college then, and mom refused to allow me to take the TR6 along (she
must have known Watkin's Glen was 20 minutes away), so I decided to cover it up
until Fall Break and do the second clutch repair then. Fall Break arrived, and
sure enough the little difficulties with the clutch were still apparent (not
that I was expecting them to disappear). Ripped it all apart again, this time
my carrier sleeve was EXCESSIVELY worn, the anti-rotation pin missing (assumed
broken), and the T/O bearing making slight squealing noises. See the picture to
look at the wear on the T/O bearing. (and no, I do not ride the clutch)
http://www.pil.net/~mowogmg/pics/tob-sleeve-wear.jpg
The pins on the fork were also very flat spotted.
So this time, I decided to replace everything contained in the bell housing too.
Only to find that the tapered pin had now sheered. Great. Cut out the shaft,
tossed it in the metal bin under the work bench. Picked up a new shaft from
Power British (supplied by TRF), only to find that it didn't fit! The hole for
the tapered pin was drilled 1/8" in the wrong direction. Fine, called a friend
and he had an NOS Stanpart clutch shaft and he'd drop it off in an hour.
Wonderful, this'll get done tonight. Got the 25 year old shaft, cleaned all the
slight rust scale off and the cosmoline off, and it was ready to go. But first
I took pictures of the NOS shaft, the old shaft and the TRF shaft to email to
John Swauger @ TRF to make him aware of the problem. TRF denies there was a
problem at all despite the photos (something I was not happy about).
I double bushed the clutch shaft at the same time, used a hardened tapered pin,
new carrier sleeve, and new pins for the clutch fork, as well as another new T/O
bearing. I had the flywheel resurfaced this time, and installed a new spigot
(pilot) bushing into the end of the crankshaft. All seems to be well now.
I attribute the failures not to bad T/O bearings, but to the design of the Borg
& Beck clutch. I had noted the differences between the Laycock pressure plate
and the B&B one but thought nothing of it at the time, until I read a webpage on
the subject that said the B&B clutch required about 150-200lbs of pressure on
the splines to disengage the clutch. This extra pressure is what will lead to
T/O bearing failure (overloading the bearing), to breaking the pin (too much
pressure against the fork, thus against the axis of the clutch shaft... the pin
is sure to sheer), to the excessive wear on my carrier sleeve and the breaking
of the anti-rotation pin. I only realised how much sense the failures made
after reading this...
http://www.geocities.com/mntriumphs/clutch.html
No failures to date, but due to the elevated / bent fingers of the B&B pressure
plate there isn't enough clearance between the T/O bearing and the fingers so
they seem to touch a little resulting in a very slight whine that is audible
while idle.
Moral of the story is, go with the Laycock (now Luk) clutches if you can... that
or the one from Clutch Masters (see Graham's post). It looks good as well, note
to mention being well priced and having an alignment tool and new spigot (pilot)
bushing. The supercharged motor (in build-up at the moment) will contain a
Clutch Master's clutch kit.
Kai
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