The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Driveline 54 3100 3sp rebuild

I tore back into the torque tube 3 speed tranny, replaced both bearings and the rear bushing. When I reassembled the unit I have all the gears but when I tighten the input shaft cover it locks it up. I changed the snap ring with the old one but no go. Do I need a thicker gasket for clearance? I've been into these transmissions many times without this issue. Never put in new bearings, though. Thoughts?

Where did the bearings come from?

Everything that comes from a slave labor factory in China is out of tolerance by several thousands of an inch or more.

U-joints, distributor rotors, you name it.

The clutch bearing was a National out of China. The rear bearing was from John Deere out of South Africa. 207L and 305.

I had a senior mechanical instructor to drive it into my head.
Always check and measure the dimensions of seals and bearings.
Compare the new part in the box with the old one that you have removed.

The senior man explained it this way. In a factory environment, machine downtime has to be accounted for. The factory manager is relentless about uptime and efficiency. If you measure first and find a problem, you get a free replacement from the parts room and the parts room is assigned a portion of the machine downtime for the wrong part. If you install without measuring and find a problem, you may get sympathy from the parts room but you (young mechanic) are assigned all the machine downtime.

For the second time you have to disassemble, remove a part and reassemble with new part.

The unit supervisor is unhappy because one of his machines is down and the factory manager is frowning.
The machine operator is delighted because he/she can spend more time in the break room goofing-off.

Well, things seem to work out for the best... tore it back down and found a broken brass synchronizer ring. Had another drum and put it in. As far as the bearings go... the snap ring on the clutch shaft bearing (China) was too wide for the input housing. Put on a snap ring from an old bearing and all is well. Ah, the joys of working on these old trucks!

That's funny you mention the snap ring.

I watched a video of a MOPAR mechanic who put a new driveshaft in a 60s muscle car. There was a vibration at high speed that could be felt while driving.

Long story short, the culprit was the Chinese U-Joint. Specifically the groove for the snap ring was several thousandths of an inch too wide so the snap ring didn't hold everything snug. The driveshaft was jiggling around.

Like you, the guy had to find a wider snap ring from an old Ford application to make up the difference.

It's pathetic that we have to rely on Red Chinese slaves to build restoration parts for our antique American cars and trucks.

I rebuild many early transmissions, mostly the open driveline version. It's common for the front bearing snap ring to be too wide. While I'm not a big fan of Chinese made parts either. You will find the same situation from other sources as well. That bearing is common to many applications. I just use the old one or one from my collection and move on.
Fred