{"id":522,"date":"2011-10-14T11:12:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-14T19:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seabrighthotrods.com\/?p=522"},"modified":"2014-11-11T09:58:28","modified_gmt":"2014-11-11T17:58:28","slug":"torque-tube-pinion-seal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.seabrighthotrods.com\/?p=522","title":{"rendered":"A Pinion Seal for Ford’s Torque Tube"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re running a banjo and torque tube \u2014 especially if your car sits on a rake \u2014 \u00a0you\u2019ve probably wrestled with the problem of your rear end oil drilling it\u2019s way up the torque tube, starving the banjo and flooding the trans. When this problem resulted in a banjo fry in a friend\u2019s roadster, it was time for some pre-emptive action.<\/p>\n

Gary\u2019s roadster has a \u201935-\u201936 banjo and torque tube, with a \u201934 driveshaft and 4.11 gears. He was getting ready to switch to 3.54\u2019s, so it was an ideal time to attack the oil migration problem.<\/p>\n

It worked out to be three part solution: a machined Insert Sleeve<\/em> designed to sit in the bell of the torque tube, a simple Ford seal, and a Pinion Collar<\/em> designed to replace the locknut on the pinion.
\n\"\"<\/a>\"Banjo<\/a><\/p>\n

The Insert Sleeve slides into the torque tube bell and is fixed by three set-screws that have been drilled and tapped into the tube. Ford didn\u2019t precision-machine these bells \u2013 in fact Gary\u2019s was slightly cone shaped \u2013 so the sleeve was machined for O-rings to accommodate Ford\u2019s variation. Other year Ford torque tubes bells aren’t even close<\/em> to being round inside — a fact that keeps a solution like this from becoming a universal product. The sleeve was also notched to match the flow-back hole in the flange, providing a return path for trapped oil to flow back into the banjo.
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You can see one of the three set-screws on the torque tube in the photo below. The sleeve is dimpled to accept it.
\n\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The seal slides in next, and seats against a shoulder machined into the sleeve.
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Pinion Seal Collar <\/em>below replaces the original pinion locknut. Gary installed it when he replaced the ring gear, but it could also be done to a banjo that was already buttoned up because the nut that adjusts the preload doesn\u2019t have to be loosened to install this new locknut.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the collar on the pinion. The collar is shallow enough that it won\u2019t interfere with the driveshaft coupler.
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

He’s put quite a few miles on this set-up and has had no problems. It\u2019s bone dry on the shop floor under the car, too.<\/p>\n

Gary has machined a second set of seals for Mike Wittmann\u2019s car: it\u2019s running a shortened \u201940 torque tube. As expected, when compared to Gary\u2019s, the inside bell dimensions were different. In fact, it wasn’t even close to being round<\/em>. Check it out:
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

While Gary’s ’36 didn’t require any machining, this ’40 was probably as bad as they get and had to be machined round in order to accept the sleeve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re running a banjo and torque tube \u2014 especially if your car sits on a rake \u2014 \u00a0you\u2019ve probably wrestled with the problem of your rear end oil drilling it\u2019s way up the torque tube, starving the banjo and flooding the trans. When this problem resulted in a banjo fry in a friend\u2019s roadster, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shopnews","category-past_projects"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1I3Pf-8q","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seabrighthotrods.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seabrighthotrods.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seabrighthotrods.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seabrighthotrods.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seabrighthotrods.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.seabrighthotrods.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seabrighthotrods.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seabrighthotrods.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seabrighthotrods.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}