[DeTomaso] Back on the street again...

[MikeLDrew at aol.com]

Hi guys,

Some of you who were in Reno may recall the minor lake that appeared 
underneath my car each morning, as it comprehensively dumped its clutch fluid 
overboard.   By continually topping off the master I was able to keep the thing 
working, but the internal throwout bearing was clearly leaking, and after I 
got the car home and parked it for a few days, when I came home it had 
completely leaked out and was empty.

I wasn't looking forward to the job of tearing the unit apart and 
rebuilding it, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought that the problem 
lay not with the seals, but rather with the fittings leading into and out of 
the unit.   The fact that it functioned perfectly, and leaked at rest but 
not under pressure, led me to that conclusion.

I'd prefer a traditional external slave system, and in fact Dennis Quella, 
who was such a strong proponent of the internal units (and who convinced me 
to get one from him back in 1992 or thereabouts) now strongly advises 
against the internal units now.   Unfortunately I'm rather wedded to the system by 
virtue of the fact that all the hardware associated with an external system 
(clutch line, slave, bracket, spring, clutch arm etc.) was discarded by the 
guy who restored my car, and it would be a PIA to re-install the clutch 
fork/bearings in the ZF.   So I was determined to just do whatever it took to 
get my internal unit going again.

Yesterday, Stephane Bergeron was at my house--he had flown over from Paris 
to help me out (gotta love friends like that!   Never mind that he's an Air 
France captain who had flown a trip from Paris to San Francisco...)   We 
tore the gearbox out in relatively little time, and I was pleased to see that 
my analysis was correct.   The seals were perfect but the fittings were 
screwed up.

The unit sits on the nose of the gearbox, slightly ahead of the plane where 
the hydraulic lines enter and exit, so ideally, the 90-degree fittings on 
the unit should be pointed aft somewhat.   Both of mine were positioned 
slightly forward, meaning that the lines needed to make a bit of a tortured bend 
where they connected.   What happened was that these lines were acting like 
tiny little wrenches operated by tiny little hands, and put enough stress on 
the fittings to unscrew them about 1/8 of a turn each, which was enough to 
generate a leak.

Once the mystery was solved, it had to be fixed.   The fittings are fine 
NPT pipe thread, and are made of pretty sturdy stuff, while the bearing 
carrier is a somewhat soft steel.   By oiling the threads, it was possible to work 
the fittings around a little bit at a time, turning them eventually about 
270 degrees further, so that they weren't quite facing the proper 
orientation, but on the other side.   Then we removed them, cleaned the oil and 
shavings from the threads, applied a liberal dose of blue Loc-tite, and upon 
installation, tweaked them just that much further, so they were now aligned 
perfectly.

Although I had presumed that I would replace the seals, Stephane urged me 
to let sleeping dogs lie.   Knowing this meant I would be driving my Pantera 
that day as opposed to some deeply indeterminate point in the future, I went 
along, and soon (well, soon-ish) the gearbox was back in the car and all 
was well.

After a shopping trip at the local auto parts and hardware stores (you have 
no idea how difficult it is to find grade 8 SAE hardware in France), we 
came back and filled and bled the system, and then had a nice, totally 
uneventful drive at about 9:30 p.m.

Whee!

This morning, we're going to attack the carburetor which is noticeably lean 
on the primary side, then he'll put on his uniform and we'll head to the 
airport for him to fly back home.

Listening to the sounds of Tower of Power's "Back on the street again" in 
my head.....:>)

Mike