What to look for in a transmission

[psimet]

Tore down my existing transmission. Looking for some input regarding condition on these gears. On a scale of 1 (replace now)-10 (those are perfect) how would you rate them?








The cluster gear is worse than I first thought unfortunately. I have another and I’m hoping it’s in ok shape.

[Marshall V. Daut]

Bite the bullet and replace those gears. They're toast. Would you really trust them? There will never be a better or less expensive time to replace those gears than now: the transmission is out, it's disassembled and you've resigned yourself to investing money in it. New gears will cost a bunch more down the road after the tranny fails. When will all the stars be in alignment again like this?
Marshall

[Brentwood Bob]

Pm sent.

[psimet]

I was looking through this doc https://www.santaanitaas.org/wp-cont...ugust-2018.pdf
..and noticed they bead blasted all the gears. Is that fine? I have glass bead loaded in my blast cabinet but wouldn't have thought of bead blasting the gears. I have an input and main shaft that could use it...

[psimet]

Time to round back on this one. Like with everything I undertake I learned way more than I had anticipated.

Thanks to a member here I was hooked up with Steve Mitchell. Great guy and a helluva resource. He was able to supply me with used gears in good condition. I bought the rest of the parts. The same family I bought my rebuilt engine from had a sale to help part out his remaining stockpile and i was able to pick up a lot of transmission parts.

I used that case that I mention above. Glass bead blasted everything I was re-using (the reverse idler, main shaft) as well as the input shaft, front bearing retainer, rear bearing retainer etc. I found Ford Script on so many of my parts under all that grease an oil.





I cleaned and nickel plated everything I could for the tower. With the help of my son I got it built the other day.





Got the safety wire and e-brake pawl done today. Now to get it back in the car and start installing all the rest of this stuff I’ve been busy restoring…

Reminder of what it used to look like:



And way back when I first started working on the car

[Brentwood Bob]

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Like the mushroom shift knob to finish off the restoration.

[psimet]

Originally Posted by Brentwood Bob

Like the mushroom shift knob to finish off the restoration.

Thank you. It’s the one that was on there. I just buffed it up. Single family car so I wanted to have my hand on the same shift knob my uncle and my great uncle used when they drove it.

[Synchro909]

When I took delivery of my 1928 Tudor, I checked everything before starting it and found that the oil in the gearbox was LOW. The teeth of the big gear at the front of the bottom shaft were just dipping oil. Every tooth in there was pitted and the oil that was in there was full of sparkly bit of gears. In the whole time he had owned he car, the previous owner had not checked the oil. .
These gearboxes are tougher than we expect. I flushed it several times till I got almost no metal flakes when I drained it and installed a magnet on the drain plug. I put a set of new bearings though it and drove on. Nearly 20,000 miles since and it is still going just fine with no nasty noises. If $ are short, IMO, there is no need to replace much in there now. It can wait.

[psimet]

Originally Posted by Synchro909

When I took delivery of my 1928 Tudor, I checked everything before starting it and found that the oil in the gearbox was LOW. The teeth of the big gear at the front of the bottom shaft were just dipping oil. Every tooth in there was pitted and the oil that was in there was full of sparkly bit of gears. In the whole time he had owned he car, the previous owner had not checked the oil. .
These gearboxes are tougher than we expect. I flushed it several times till I got almost no metal flakes when I drained it and installed a magnet on the drain plug. I put a set of new bearings though it and drove on. Nearly 20,000 miles since and it is still going just fine with no nasty noises. If $ are short, IMO, there is no need to replace much in there now. It can wait.

We did a spring safety check for our local club. It was fun and really got me laying eyes on the mechanicals on a lot of running A’s. At first I was shocked at the number of them that had low or almost no oil in the transmissions (along with loose wheel bearings, no grease, low oil, etc).

I’m in the cycling industry and we have the same thing with people that just ride their bikes and never do maintenance or think of repairs. My favorite quote from that crowd is, “I have people for that”. In that world I’m their “people”.

It slowly made sense to me that even though so much of this hobby is centered around working on these cars there is still a heavy dose of “I have people for that” sentiment and general neglect of routine maintenance.

I left that safety check once again reminded that as long as you throw something remotely flammable in the engine that these things really will keep running.

After spending all this time I absolutely would have kept running the gears I originally had but I am glad that I did swap them for this restoration.