Author Topic: 1953 Ford standard transmission  (Read 7718 times)

Offline gbritnell

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1953 Ford standard transmission
« on: August 10, 2020, 04:44:01 PM »
Gentlemen,
I had posted a thread in the tools area about cutting helical gears. The purpose of cutting them is for a forthcoming project, an early 50's Ford 3 speed manual transmission.
Several years ago I built a Borg-Warner T-5 manual transmission to go behind my 302 V-8 engine. At the time I knew how to cut helical gears but with the amount of gears needed for that transmission I felt it was a daunting task so the gears were all made as spur type.

Fast forward to this project. I completed the Galion road grader and was a little burned out so I didn't want to get back into metal cutting right away. I finished up a couple of projects around the house and completed a couple of plastic model airplanes that I had started quite awhile ago.
When I got the idea for this project a friend of my son has several old flathead powered cars with manual transmissions. He also has quite a few parts laying about and graciously loaned me a trans to take pictures and dimensions. I measured everything and took photos. From there I drew the trans (full size) in Autocad. The next step was to scale it down (1/3) to fit my flathead V-8 engine. The usual modifications were needed when scaling something smaller, metal wall thicknesses, bearings that would fit the scale, and in this case calculating and machining the required gears but this time they would all be helicals and not spurs.

Between the work that the late Chuck Fellows had done creating the fixture and the wonderful spreadsheets that Don1966 created I converted all the gears over form spur to helical while maintaining the proper center to center shaft spacing. The nice thing about making helicals is that by a simple change of helix angle you can change the P.D. of a gear.

With spur gears you just figure out what D.P. you are going to use and how many teeth are on each gear and this will give you the P.D. Quite straightforward. To make helical gears first you need the cutter. It is possible to use standard involute cutters but then you need quite a few of the set of 8 to cut the proper tooth form for a given diametral pitch. In my case I made my own cutter which started from a piece of .50 diameter W-1 drill rod. I use W-1 rather than O-1 because it cuts a little easier. With the small diameter cutter I didn't have to worry about the tooth form changing so I split the difference in the range of gears I was cutting and went with the recommended cutter for the needed tooth count. The cutter shape was formed using a hand ground H.S. lathe tool. It was then gashed with the dividing head (4 teeth) and each tooth was relieved using a small burr in a hand grinder. I left about .040 of the tooth shape in case I needed to sharpen the faces. The cutter was then hardened and the faces polished with a diamond lapping stick. I didn't anneal the cutter as it had enough tooth thickness that I wasn't worried about breaking any teeth.




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Offline crueby

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Re: 1953 Ford standard transmission
« Reply #1 on: August 10, 2020, 04:54:26 PM »
This sounds like a great project, am sending the shop elves out for more popcorn....


 :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn:

Offline gbritnell

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Re: 1953 Ford standard transmission
« Reply #2 on: August 10, 2020, 05:01:30 PM »
The next step in the process was to make the helical templates. There are 8 gears in this transmission so 8 templates would be required. When Chuck built his fixture he used 1/8" thick aluminum. I tried this once and didn't have much luck so I make my templates from 1/32" brass sheet. Each template starts out with the long dimension as the circumference of the 1.00 diameter mandrel (Pi or 3.142") The other dimension is 1.60". All the plates were cut to size and squared up then each plate had 2 small slots cut in the ends. These would be for mounting the template to the arbor. Using Don's spreadsheet the offset dimension was calculated and each template was set up in the mill and the required angle was cut. To get them exact I used my dial indicator and and digital readout to measure the angle. (Tangent of each angle times  the -X- travel. The angular piece was cut off with a small slitting saw. With all the templates cut they needed to be formed around a piece of 1.00 diameter rod so they were all annealed prior to forming. I clamped each template against the bar in the mill and started forming the radius. I could only get so far around so by holding the already started radius against the rod I pressed it all around to get it rolled into a complete circle. There is always a little spring in the material so I roll the stock a little tighter then slip it back over the bar and tap it lightly with a piece of soft wood. This forms the template into an almost perfect radius. Each template was then marked with the proper information so I wouldn't get them confused in use. When the templates have a very steep angle material needs to be removed from the opposite side so that the roller follower will get down far enough to use the full travel of the mandrel.
Talent unshared is talent wasted.

Offline gbritnell

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Re: 1953 Ford standard transmission
« Reply #3 on: August 10, 2020, 05:13:14 PM »
The next part of the gear cutting process was to make the index plates. I already had 3 from previous jobs and a couple of them had the right hole spacing to use for the new gears so I only had to make 2 more plates. The plates are 12L14 steel. The O.D. is 1.94 with an .84 x .25 diameter boss. The through hole is .375 reamed to fit on the arbor. It also has an 8-32 tapped hole for a set screw to lock it to the shaft. The plates were turned then the stock was put in the mill vise and centered. Using the hole function of the digital readout the required number of .125 diameter holes were drilled and reamed. The plates were then cut from the stock and the flange was turned to the proper thickness.
Talent unshared is talent wasted.

Offline gbritnell

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Re: 1953 Ford standard transmission
« Reply #4 on: August 10, 2020, 05:26:35 PM »
Here are a couple of pictures of the fixture. I added a tapped hole in the top of the fixture for a locking screw. I made a brass shoe so the locking screw wouldn't mar the shaft. The shaft is .50 diameter drill rod that is polished to fit into the reamed hole. There's quite a bit of hammering when cutting so everything needs to be as tight as possible. When cutting I very lightly tighten the locking screw just to add a little resistance to the shaft. The other thing when cutting is always and I really mean 'always' conventional cut. If you tried to climb cut the cutter would grab the stock and ruin the part and the cutter.
On the top of the fixture is a bar with a ball bearing on the end that rides against the template. It works very nicely when cutting. You just need to keep tension against the template. At the rear of the fixture is the mandrel that holds the template. This is free to rotate on the .375 shaft. The index plate is locked to the shaft and in my case I use a knurled brass pin as my index key.
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Offline cnr6400

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Re: 1953 Ford standard transmission
« Reply #5 on: August 10, 2020, 05:31:31 PM »
I have also ordered a dump truck load of popcorn  :ThumbsUp:

I worked on a few of those old boxes at my Dad / Grandfather's garage when I was a kid, it will be interesting to see one built in miniature. Most of the work we did on them was shifter and bearings related, as they came off 30-40 yr old farm trucks and equipment, many had done about a million miles, and everything except the gears was just plain worn out. When they wouldn't shift any more, or the oil was running out either end, we would rebuild them and off they would go again. Parts were dirt cheap for them in the late 1970's early 1980's.
"I've cut that stock three times, and it's still too short!"

Offline gbritnell

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Re: 1953 Ford standard transmission
« Reply #6 on: August 10, 2020, 05:48:31 PM »
At the end of the fixture arbor is an adapter that holds a mandrel to mount your gear blanks on. I have several different sizes depending on what size gears I'm going cut.
The gear blanks were turned, drilled and reamed and cut off. They were then cut to thickness (.25 dia.) They were mounted to the mandrel and held in place with an 8-32 Allen head cap screw.
Six of the gears have a helix angle of 28 degrees. The other two are 31 degrees. I used my angle blocks and taped them together to get the required angle. The fixture was set against the angle blocks and the vise snugged up. Just to make sure I checked the angle with my indicator to verify it. All was good.
So here you have the 8 gears that will make up the transmission and a group shot of everything that's required to make them. Once you have made a few it's actually very enjoyable especially when they come out good. That's not to say that I haven't had my share of oops along the way. With this project I only had 3 oops. One was the aforementioned climb cut. Although I hadn't intended on making a climb cut I had the blank a little too close to the cutter when I indexed it, it grabbed and luckily no harm was done, except to the blank. Another oops was when I was indexing the fixture. Each of the index plates has 2 rows of holes. One plate has two rows that have almost the same number of holes. It wasn't until I finished cutting the gear and took it off the mandrel that I realized one of the teeth wasn't the same shape as the others. What happened was the fixture is at an angle so it's a little hard to see the holes and as I was indexing at one point I put the index pin in the wrong row of holes. The two rows happened to have 2 holes that were pretty close at that point and I chose the wrong one. (One thin tooth and one thick tooth) The last oops was a template error. When I cut the helical angle onto the template I cut it from the wrong edge so instead of 47 degrees I had 43 degrees. (Bad gear new template).
The two small gears are the reverse idler set. One goes on the countershaft to drive the reverse idler but has to clear the slider as it engages the idler.
« Last Edit: August 10, 2020, 05:51:37 PM by gbritnell »
Talent unshared is talent wasted.

Offline Johnmcc69

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Re: 1953 Ford standard transmission
« Reply #7 on: August 10, 2020, 07:31:46 PM »
 :ThumbsUp:
 Another great project George!
 I'm looking forward to following along & learning.
 :popcorn:
 John

Online Roger B

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Re: 1953 Ford standard transmission
« Reply #8 on: August 10, 2020, 07:55:35 PM »
That's some rather clever stuff  :praise2:  :praise2: I will be following along  :wine1:
Best regards

Roger

Offline Admiral_dk

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Re: 1953 Ford standard transmission
« Reply #9 on: August 10, 2020, 09:43:24 PM »
Great start to another project I will follow  :cheers:

Looking forward to see how many differences there are to most modern motorcycle boxes I've seen - I only ever seen the inside of a VW Beetle box (once) when it comes to cars.

Offline derekwarner

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Re: 1953 Ford standard transmission
« Reply #10 on: August 10, 2020, 11:26:56 PM »
I too have experiences with a 1950's Ford geabox.......

It was in a Prefect Utility, hand painted dark Green and kept on jumping out of second gear ...yes, the vehicle I finally learn't to drive in.....[after much yelling  :Director: from my Father]

Watching on with interest

Derek
« Last Edit: August 12, 2020, 04:12:39 AM by derekwarner »
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Offline Art K

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Re: 1953 Ford standard transmission
« Reply #11 on: August 10, 2020, 11:42:42 PM »
George,
This looks to be a very interesting project. I'll be following along. My only transmission rebuilds were Volvo 140 series 4 speed, easy. And a Saab 99, PITA.
Art
"The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you" B.B. King

Offline Don1966

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Re: 1953 Ford standard transmission
« Reply #12 on: August 11, 2020, 02:29:21 AM »
Looking forward to more updates George and the gears look awesome. From what I read you used one cutter for all the gears that saves much time. The other thing you mentioned was dial indicating the setup template to check the angle. I am sure some would enjoy a lesson on how you go about doing that if it’s not to much to ask. Maybe on another thread You could show it if it’s to much from here.
Also enjoyed our conversation the other day it was great to hear from you. I been working on a spiral gear and helical spreadsheet fir future use not sure how it will end yet. Spiral gears are different as to the relationship to the shaft but has helical angles, so this complicates things for me but we will see. I just need to research them more.


Regards Don

Offline nj111

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Re: 1953 Ford standard transmission
« Reply #13 on: August 11, 2020, 09:48:38 AM »
Watching with great interest and keen to learn more from you George!
Nick

Offline sid pileski

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Re: 1953 Ford standard transmission
« Reply #14 on: August 11, 2020, 04:42:12 PM »
George-
I'm watching too. Very nice work as usual.

Not to derail this thread, but in you first post, you mentioned "the late late Chuck Fellows".
I'm not on every day, so that is news to me that I'm saddened by.
When was that? Was there a thread or link to an obit?

Again, apologize for the kink in your thread.

Please disregard.. After I posted this, I did a search (should have done that first!). I found the notice.
Still sad.


Sid   
« Last Edit: August 11, 2020, 04:57:44 PM by sid pileski »

 

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