Farmall C clutch problems

I have a farmall C that i just had a new clutch put in 2 years ago. But it grinds when i try to put it in gear with the clutch engaged. Now i know how to adjust the clutch which i do about an 1/8" every time this happens. But it seems about every other time i drive it i have to adjust it again. I dont have much more adjustment left. I know about the grease fitting right behind the the release bearing witch i am pretty sure is taking grease. Is there something else i am doing or not doing that could be causing this to happen?

Chris, there's a short list of things that could be contributing to your problem.

First off, it's not at all abnormal to have a little gear clash on these beasts. It's their nature. If it's bad enough that you actually have difficulty getting it into gear, then there's almost certainly somethin' need fixin'.

Most common is a dirty/sticky pilot bushing. This is the bronze bushing inside the rear end of your crankshaft. You see it through the center of the clutch when you have the ttransmission and torque tube off. It supports the front end of the shaft. Very common for this bushing to be worn or more likely gummed up, which causes the shaft to stick and turn with it it instead of the bushing turning freely around the shaft. The shaft turning will cause your gears to crash a little when you try to put the trnny into gear. One way to check this out (doesn't always work but usually does) is to leave the tractor running with the clutch pedal depressed, the shifter in neutral and the PTO engaged. Have a helper look at the PTO shaft. If it's turning, but only just creeping, they can try (CAREFULLY!!) to stop it or at least slow it down by hand. If that works, it's likely just a sticky bushing troubling you. If it doesn't try to turn, you may just be experiencing the usual clash of an unsynchronized tranny. If the PTO is turning with gusto, fast enough that the splines are a blur and it's speed goes up and down with the speed of the motor, they SHOULD NOT ATTEMPT to stop it by hand and you likely have another problem.

You could also try using a stiffer oil in the tranny, which will help to slow down any turning the input shaft might want to do brcaue of a sticky pilot bushing, or simply the momentum of the tractor just having been stopped. 90W is the standard, but someting like 85-140 might help if you're not in a very cold climate.

I'm a little interested/concerned about this tightening up of the free-play adjustment you talked about. Are you just tightening it up thinking that you're fixing something or are you actually taking up some slack each time?

If you are actually taking up new slack each time, I'm gonna go out on a limb at suggest that the jam nuts that lock down the finger height on your clutch cover weren't tightened down, allowing that adjustment to move. If it gets bad enough, you wind up with the fingers just flopping around out of reach of the fce of the bearing. It's not common, but I've seen it a couple of times. On a bigger Farmall (at least on an M, I know, BTDT), you could get the clutch off the flywheel and fix it. On a C, to do it RIGHT, and ONLY if that is the problem, would mean splitting to get the clutch off and set it up to specs and tighten everything down on a bench before re-installing.

You might be able to scope the potential out for that problem I'm describing by looking up through the hand-hole on the bottom of your torque tube and checking out two things. 1) Turn the engine by hand so that you can see the bolt and jam nut for each of the fingers, If any of those jam nuts are loose, you may have the problem I describe. 2) Set your free-play to the 1-7/16" (front of tranny cover to back of pedal) then crawl back under and look back the other way from the hole on bottom or through the hole on the side you use to grease the bearing carrier, and check out the clearance between the face of the throwout bearing and the fingers, Turn the motor over so that you can see each of them. That clearance should be about 3/16".

If those two things seem to be in order, and the noise is nothing more than just a little grinding before she clunks solidly into gear, then I go back to the pilot bushing as the most likely problem, if there is a problem at all. Remember they are noisy and clunky by their nature.

There's still the possibility out there that the clutch was not set up right and locked in properly to begin with, but ALMOST all of them come out of the box ready to go (cover and finger height) so keep that at the bottom of the list.

Start with the simple stuff.

Scotty below has covers this issue better than the manuals do.

Throwout fork that pushes the throwout bearing is bending. BTDT

Good idea.

In the BTDT Got the T-shirt mode, brings another thought to mind. If the grinding is felt more in the pedal than in the shifter, it could be the rod from the pedal that moves the fork is off center. Don't know how the geometry of it all is in a C chassis, but I had that happen on a BN, and the end of the rod was hitting the caps on the bolts that adjust the fingers. It was an easy fix, happened to notice that the pin that the fork pivots on was recessed a lot further into the torque tube on one side than the other. A few taps on a drift to center that pin back up did the trick.

Just the kind of thing that would be recurrent and not get any better (might actually get worse) by adjusting the free play.

I'll be watching to see what this one turns out to be.

wow thanks for all the feedback. I havent narrowed it down completely yet but i do think that the fork may be bending. Went out and looked at it and i noticed the clearance between the bottom of the fork and the grease fitting has shrunk. Which in turn the bearing sit further back. I havent had time to spend on it yet. But there might be something else causing it to bend. So with the pedal up the bearing should be sitting 3/16" from the fingers? I may have been over adjusting i was leaving less than an 1/8".

Tractorman was onto something, too.

From the ones I've had open and looked at, the forks, if they've seen a lot of use, can bow, so it is possible that yours is giving out. It's also possible that it got put back in backwards, but that would put the bow forward and be reducing your freeplay, not increasing it.

Another issue is that a replacement bearing, if that was done when you replaced the clutch, might not be pressed into the carrier deeply enough, but that would give you a problem, again, with not being able to get enough free play, not having to chase it the way you are.

Again, I'll encourage you to evaluate the possiblity that it's a sticky pilot bushing or to see if the problem goes away by simply holding the clutch pedal down another couple of seconds (the "nature of the beast" non-problem). If the pilot bushing is really a problem, or if it turns out to be a problem with the fork or bearing that Tractorman is onto, the only fix is going to involve splitting the tractor again right behind the motor.

If that becomes necessary, examine the fork first. Any sign of it failing, you need to get a replacement. I have no idea if CaseIHNHFord still stocks such a thing, and you may have to go to salvage or have one fabbed up. It's not a complicated piece to make, but it will take better metal than your typical hardware store flat stock.

I hesitate to suggest that, if you find a sigificant fore-aft bow in the fork that you try turning it around. A slight bow, with no sign of any cracking in the metal is not uncommon and perfectly serviceable and isn't causing your problem. A very pronounced bow with any sign of cracking in the metal is trouble. If that turns out to be the root of your problem, the metal is fatigued enough that you are only delaying the ultimate failure. It's no small thing to split a tractor, and you might as well do it right while you can get in there.

It'd be a good time to look over and evaluate the pilot bushing, too. ;8^) You might actually get away with just cleaning that up, but there'd be no better time to replace it, either.

If there is a problem like I desribed in the earlier post about the fingers on the clutch or even the clearance being off, having the tractor split is your only/best opportunity to do anyting about all that. It's 6* above out, so I won't be trekking out to the garage just now to get the books with the specs for the clutch cover and fingers, but I'd be happy to provide them if that turns out to be the problem.

They changed the format here a little so I'm not sure how to open up my email. Ping me at staylor48 at verizon dot net, if you'd like.

As a last thought for the moment, when eyeballing the actual clearance between the throwout bearing and the clutch fingers when you think you have your free play about right at the pedal, get a long screwdriver or a stick in there to make sure the fingers are pressed all the way forward (away from the bearing face)before you evaluate that 3/16" gap. If nothing else, having all the fingers at a reasonably uniform distance is as critical as anything to having a good starting point for getting you runnin' in good order.

I should have thought of that. I was test driving our Super C, after putting in a new clutch, when the fork bent right over and tore all the fingers off the pressure plate. Dad called the dealer and we took a flying forty mile trip to get parts before closing time.

I adjusted it again and checked the pto while in neutral and with the clutch engaged it stopped completely without any assistance. So i think the bearing is probably ok. It was replaced when the clutch was. When I split it i will evaluate it more. I am getting ready to go on vacation so i will get back to you sometime after christmas. Once again thanks for all your help.