This is related to Fred's "Stuck clutch" thread, but involves a slightly
different set of circumstances. I wanted to share the story and the "fix" just
the same.
Last Fall, I was having increasing amounts of difficulty getting the trannie of
our BT7-II into gear from neutral with the engine idling without crunching. No
matter if I selected first, fourth or reverse. This proceeded to worsen to the
point that I would warm the car up, then turn it off, depress the clutch,
select a gear, then start it back up to avoid crunching gears. If I was on
level ground and did not have the brake set, the car would move a couple of
inches. Upshifts while on the road were no issue. Any downshift while under
way was an adventure in double clutching.
During the annual "winter outage," I pulled the trannie with the goal of
investigating a rebuild. And to replace the clutch, pressure plate and release
bearing. What I found astounded me and made me realize that the symptoms
described above were telling me the problem, but I wasn't listening.
The release bearing had worn to the point that the clutch was never fully
disengaging. The clutch disk was worn down to the rivets. But, more
importantly and most frighteningly, the flywheel was "fire-cracked." By never
fully disengaging while stopped with the clutch depressed, the disk had
overheated the flywheel to the point that cracks 0.015" to 0.020" wide had
opened up. I have no idea how deep they were, but was sure that they could not
have been mitigated with any reasonable amount of resurfacing. The flywheel
was toast.
I found another flywheel and reinstalled everything with new clutch components
(And an external rear seal on the block "while I was in the neighborhood.")
Presto-change, problem solved. I am not sure how long the flywheel would have
lasted in the "as-found" condition, but failure at speed would have had tragic
results.
Just thought I would share.
Cheers.
Paul, 62 BT7-II, Knoxville, TN
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