<VV> dumb question!/clutch job

[Tony Underwood]

At 02:37 AM 9/24/2009, Ray Rodriguez III wrote:
>Thanks for the info Lon, I will (already started) inspect everything
>carefully.  The flywheel is bolted and seems perfect.. so hopefully I wont
>have those type problems on my hands.
>
>The pilot bushing is VERY loose on the shaft.....  almost seems like it
>wasnt the right size to begin with...  As I recall there are two different
>sizes correct?


Nope.   They were all the same.



>It's also kinda silver in color..and I remember the ones
>I've seen before being a kind of brass/copperish color....


Yours sounds like sintered iron... something aftermarket?   Not a fan 
of the iron bushings.


>Also of note, the nearly new clutch that was in there is the crappy rivited
>type... so there is no question... I have to replace it.


I've never seen a stock type clutch disk that wasn't riveted... ;)





By the way:

It IS possible to remove oil from a contaminated disk by giving it a 
soak in TCE (trichloroethelyne) which does a dandy job of extracting 
the oil but the stuff is somewhat toxic and not easy to come by these 
days.   It's one of the best degreasers I ever saw.    I used to have 
a respectable supply of "once used" TCE I would get from ITT and 
their photo-optics line, which they used to clean fingerprints from 
glass lens fiber-optic rods which were damned near spotless to begin with.

To give you an example of how the stuff works on breaking down 
petroleum, I poured about a quart into a smallblock Chevy oil pan 
from the '60s which had about a half-inch of sludge in it, like cold 
butter only black.   After a few minutes I stirred the concoction a 
bit, then set it aside... and forgot to go back to it.

Next day the pan was dry.   I mean dry.   At the bottom of the pan 
was a layer of what looked like gray dirt that poured out like 
sand.   ...hate to think of what was in it...


TCE will break down oils and evaporate, taking the oil with it.   Yes 
I've cleaned a disk like this and after a couple days soak then 
airing it out, the disk was dry as a bone.   I went ahead and used 
it, and it's still in the car to this day, been about 14 years now 
(65 ragtop) and no chatter or grabbing at all.

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts19.html


TCE used to be used often in agricultural applications as a livestock 
feed degreaser, used to remove oils from "restaurant leftovers" that 
would be recycled as pig feed.    The .gov site outlining the 
toxicity of TCE seems rather mild...  ITT did their own study and 
immediately stopped allowing employees to take home the once-used 
"trike".  Their independent research resulted in the flat statement 
that if there was the slightest aroma of the stuff in the air, that's 
too much.   And in NO WAY would you ever wanna actually TASTE this 
stuff.    Jeez...  likewise getting it on your skin.   Did once... 
uber-irritation and the hide on my hands shrivelled up like I'd been 
in sea water for a day.

It's OK if you are CAREFUL using it.   Just don't pour it down a 
drain or onto the ground after it's done.   It's also heavier than 
water, won't float on the surface.   If you splash the stuff onto 
anything hot enough to boil it (like an exhaust manifold) it 
decomposes into thick white clouds of fumes containing something so 
corrosive it will try to eat the chrome off a bumper, turning it gray 
and cloudy.


I ruined a perfectly good Cragar SS mag wheel by pouring a bit of 
"trike" into the carb of a running engine to clean gum out of the 
carb, engine burnt (or boiled) the trike, clouds came out the tail 
pipe and blew onto the side of the car behind... didn't bother the 
paint at all but it stained and dulled the mag wheel and corner of 
the bumper.

TCE will not burn.


Too bad I can't get it the way I used to.   It's the only degreaser I 
ever saw, ever, that would remove oil or grease that had soaked into 
something like a clutch disk or a brake shoe... without ruining the 
object you wanted to degrease.   Maybe there's another chemical 
somewhere that works as well, but I haven't seen it... and evidently 
neither did ITT since to my knowledge they still use TCE.




tony..