The Stovebolt Site Forums The Parking Lot Early 'Bolts (1916-1936 1st Half) Lurch is squealing - gotta fix him

The next mini-project is to install the new old stock (NOS) torque tube bushing (ebay!!) and the seal that goes behind it.

Photo number 71 shows the old bearing and broken seal on the left and the NOS bearing with a new seal on the right. The kind folks at Bearing Engineering helped me choose a new neoprene seal (11730 CR) to replace the old, cracked cork seal and it's backup washer. The new seal assembly is .040" thicker than the cork/washer setup, but I don't think that will be a problem.

Before starting the install of the new bushing and seal, I cleaned up the outside of the torque tube so that the rear of the ball housing can move smoothly back and forth along the total torque tube sleeve. See photo 72.

Side note: When I was playing with different used parts to replace the u-joint, I noticed that the rear yoke that I'm going to use did not fully slide onto the splines of the propeller shaft. The problem was that some of the propeller shaft splines had very small ridges sticking up (from wear) that prevented the 'new' yoke with good splines from sliding back the full length of the splines. I took a small flat file and filed those ridges down thus enabling the yoke to slide all the way back. End of side note.

The inside diameter (ID) of the 'new' torque tube bushing is .002" larger than the propeller shaft. The old bushing's clearance was .040"!! When I test fitted the new bushing onto the end of the propeller shaft, it slid nicely over the splines that were sticking out of the torque tube, but would not slide back into the torque tube. Hmmm. It turns out that the little ridge that I found on the splines when testing the u-joint yoke was sticking up inside the torque tube. I had not filed them down further back on the splines completely. This was remedied with a little bit of flat filing and a thorough cleaning of the splines. See photo 73.

Now that the splines no longer have wear ridges on them, I went through the following the assembly process:

1. The first item to go into the tube was the new neoprene seal. This is to keep the oil in the u-joint area from leaking out the back to run into the differential. I smeared some assembly grease on it and gently tapped it over the drive shaft and into the torque tube until it stopped at a ledge that kept the original metal washer in place. The neoprene seal replaces the old cork seal and the metal washer. See photo 74. Note that the 'open' side of the seal faces the front of the truck.

2. After the seal was in place, I lubed the new bushing and gently tapped it into place with a long, thin screwdriver and small hammer. The bushing goes in with the extraction groove facing u-joint. See photo 75.

3. Now it was time to secure the bushing in place with a 5/16" pin, like the one I extracted out of the old bushing. See the pin hole in the torque tube in photo 76.

The new bushing did not have a hole in it for a pin, so I had to drill one. The torque tube wall at this point is 1/8" thick and the steel outer part of the bushing is 1/4" thick (making 3/8" steel total), so I decided on a pin length of 1/4". Therefore, I needed to drill a 5/16 diameter hole that would go 1/8 inch into the steel bushing surround. Before drilling the hole, I slid a couple of washers and a length of copper tubing around the drill bit so the tip of the drill bit was sticking 1/4" out from the end. This way, the drill will stop drilling at the correct depth. ;-)

Using the original pin hole in the torque tube as a guide, I drilled into the bushing. Since the drill bit has a peaked end, so did the bottom of the hole I just drilled. To get a 'square' bottom of the pin hole, I ground the tip off of another 5/16" drill bit so in essence, I made a 5/16" end mill bit and drilled the bottom of the pin hole so a 1/4" length of 5/16" rod will fit down into the hole. Using the same washers and copper tube 'drill stop setup', I cleaned out the bottom of the hole. See photo 77.

4. I cut off a 1/4" length off the shank of an old 5/16" bolt to be used to keep the bushing from rotating. So I could easily handle this short pin, I used a small blob of JB Weld (see photo 78) to glue a tooth pick onto one end of the pin. This will be cut off later.

5. After the JB Weld cured (24 hours), I test fitted the pin in the hole (see photo 79). It slid right in. ;-)

6. I gathered that since the old pin was held in place by peening the torque tube hole around it, the new pin needs to be held into place somehow. Rather than re-peening it, I used my new favorite glue; Loctite 680. See photo 80. I only used a tiny amount of the Loctite and applied it to the outside diameter of the pin as it was lowered into its hole. After the Locktite cured (24 hours), I just cut off the toothpick and lightly sanded the excess Loctite off and ended up with a smooth surface for the back of the u-joint housing to slide over. ;-)

That's the end of the new bushing installation.

Cheers, Dean