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MG TD TF 1500 - Clutch cross shaft lubrication

I have been looking at the design of the clutch cross shaft. One of the points of interest is that there is no provision for lubrication of the bearing surfaces at either end of the shaft.

My thinking was that it could be modified, like the common pedal shaft modification, with a grease nipple (zerk fitting) at each end to feed though to the centre point of each bell housing bush.

After a bit of research looking at other vehicles I found that the TR3 and TR4 had just this setup but that it was discontinued on later models. I could find no reason why.

My shaft shows localised wear on the back face of the shaft at both ends just as you would expect from the directional load when depressing the clutch. The other side of the shaft shows no wear.

Has any one done the suggested modification? What do people think?

Attached is a picture of the early and later TR shafts.

Kind regards,
Michael


M R Calvert

The shaft doesn't need to be lubed. The leaking rear seal will let plenty of oil into the bell housing where the flywheel will throw it all over the inside of the bell housing and lube the shaft. See they had it all thought out. Forrest TD/C/22679
Forrest Rubenstein

Thanks Forrest. What you suggest might indeed be enough. I would very much like to know what the Triumph engineers were saying when they decided to discontinue the lubrication points.

Any other ideas?

Michael
M R Calvert

Michael, no doubt it was a cost saving measure to discontinue the grease fittings. Unless the drilling for the grease passages and the fitting somehow weakened the shaft.

Tim
Timothy Burchfield

I did another mod you could consider. The bosses on the bellhousing are much longer than the bushes that are pushed in. When I renewed my shaft and bushes I bought three bushes. The third I cut in half, and pushed an extra half bush into each boss from the inside - giving much longer bearing surfaces. I put a smear of coppercoat grease inside the bushes before pushing the shaft through, and after twenty years there is still no play.
You could also consider fitting a right angle grease nipple on the back of each boss where it projects out from the bellhousing.
R WILSON

Thank you for the contributions.

R Wilson, I think increasing the bearing surface area in the way you have has to be a good idea with no downside that I can think of. Thank you for passing it on.

Kind regards,
Michael
M R Calvert

This thread was discussed between 30/03/2018 and 04/04/2018

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