It’s been 25 years since the original Ford three speed manual transmission in my ’66 F100 was replaced by a Borg-Warner T85 with Overdrive. So given the need to do a couple of other maintenance items and a sunny day, I decided to finally change the gear oil in both of them. When I unscrewed the plug from the transmission, I heard a plink-plink, but whatever it was got quickly lost in the old oil.
But when I poured out the contents of the drain pan into a jug, this is what was left on the bottom: a fractured pin roller bearing, about 1/8″ wide and 3/4″ long. Should I be worried?
The B-W T85 is famous for its durability, and was installed typically as a HD option, on big engines, or when the Overdrive was specified. And it still shifts just fine, so I suppose I should just assume it’s been in the bottom of the transmission for a long time. I guess its better than the pieces of a chewed gear cluster.
What motivated me to give the poor old neglected truck a looksie was the fact that twice now it didn’t want to start, and pretended that there was no juice whatsoever available to it. It turned out to be a loose nut at the starter solenoid, and a fair bit of corrosion too.
Some Emery cloth soon took care of that.
An oil change and chassis lube was on the agenda too, given that it’s been two years. I try to do it every summer, but some years it gets away from me. The truck only racks up about 1,500 miles a year, but they’re all pretty short trips.
I got out my little oil can to squirt some 30 weight into the distributor bushing port, which has a little spring-loaded cover. But the door was wide open and the spring was dead. So a quick run to the hardware store yielded this 20 cent cork stopper, the smallest one they had. there were no rubber ones that small, but I would assume the cork will be ok too.
I also finally cleaned the bolt on the adjuster on my parking/emergency brake mechanism, and for the first time in decades, I could actually turn the nut and adjust them. Now they work with a nice short pull. I’ve had to resort to a chock, a chunk of 2×4, although I’ll still carry it along for steep grades with a heavy load. I’ll have to build up some confidence in them, as they’ve been useless for way too long, thanks to my neglect.
So the old work horse is good to go again, even if its transmission is missing a part. We all lose a few parts in our later years, so we’ll just hope for the best.
Update: CC Contributor Dave Skinner has the reassuring answer in a comment.
Nice to hear the truck is sorted out and got the fluids changed. I just helped my neighbor replace the 02 Sensor, Spark Plugs, and Cylinder Head Gasket on my Camry. A good learning experience for me.
Knowing your maintenance regimen, I highly doubt it’s worth your while to go looking for a problem that may or may not exist. Given that it still works just fine it’s as likely that someone dropped the pin when installing it, and just grabbed another.
Regardless you can congratulate yourself that it isn’t in there to get pulled into the teeth anymore. Well done.
It’s as likely that someone dropped the pin when installing it, and just grabbed another.
The pin is clearly broken off at one end and shattered.
I can’t say if you should be worried or not, but I know I would be. The question is, will it worry you enough to fix it? It would me, so I’d see if I could find another transmission to either use or rebuild.
will it worry you enough to fix it?
No. My motto is “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” 🙂
Seriously, there’s no way I’m going to put my truck out of commission and undertake a rather massive project like that. I’m certainly not qualified to rebuild it. And T-85s with OD are not exactly that easy to come by anymore. Here’s one on ebay for…$1650!
https://www.ebay.com/i/292476052601?chn=ps
Was that all one piece? Looking at exploded diagrams of the T85 I can’t envision what those would be from unless it is actually a needle or two from a roller bearing and not a pin, but I’d think that would be quite noticeable if failed so I don’t think it’s that. I wonder if it’s something from the overdrive unit? Roller clutch?
One end of the longer piece is rounded and finished. The other end broken off. I don’t know if this is the whole thing, or broken off from a longer piece.
The OD is a separate unit, with its own oil supply. I’m 99% certain it came out of the transmission, not the OD. But that leaves 1% uncertainty. 🙂
Doing a bit more looking around, it does rather look like one of these roller bearings:
I haven’t yet found the dimensions for one yet, but it sure looks like it. Or about a third of one. 🙁
Wow, very interesing indeed. You’d think if a roller had fractured like that, the rest of the bearing would follow in short order, along with cage debris. It looks like an impact failure which isn’t really a needle bearing failure mode.
I had assumed that it was a locating pin that had gotten loose and sucked through some gears once, hence the breakage. But I looked at a T85 exploded view and there are no cages on the various bearings. So maybe a roller escaped and got clouted by the gears? Seems odd that there’s only one though.
That mystery piece looks like a roller bearing roller. While it will probably run for a while with a missing roller this points to either a broken cage or a damaged race and it’s probably worth pulling the transmission to fix it sooner and cheaper.
That’s the conclusion I’m quickly coming to also. Bummer…
I have to agree… although I’ve seen bearings hang on for quite a while before they finally let go. If you’re lucky enough for that to happen, I suspect you’ll ‘feel’ it rumbling as more rollers escape and it gets looser before it lets go.
A replacement transmission (obviously not a T85 at those prices!) will probably be the simplest, cheapest and quickest fix, and if you don’t mind an ‘exciting’ breakdown somewhere, I’d just plan on doing just that when this one finally lets go. Could be years, after all.
EDIT – just finished reading all the way to the end of the comments and Dave Skinner’s explanation sounds very plausible. I’d just “keep on truckin.'”
Looks like you might be losing a roller bearing, maybe the input. Could also be from the bearing between the input and main shaft, hard to judge the size. Usually not good, the risk is damage to other parts. Does it shift O.K.?
Shifts as good as it ever did.
I believe the final straight 6 F-150 came with a true 5-speed, it may have been a Mazda-built unit. If you install one of those and keep your current shifter, you could have a very nice five-on-the-tree!
[please note: this post is intended to be humorous, not serious]
Did you root with a magnetic rod in the hole? Might be more evidence in there…
I like “supermagnets” on the end of something ferrous with some JB Weld in between to make sure. And one epoxied on the plug will gather up more as it is used.
If no one else has them nearby, Lee Valley sells a nice assortment for $20. The rod-shaped ones are useful for this sort of thing.
Should you worry? Not yet. However, you will have clear indications when you should!
I agree that your shattered part is a roller bearing, but I’m going out on a limb to say you’ve got nothing to worry about (Keep in mind, I’m quite familiar with the guts of Borg Warner transmissions).
Here’s my thinking:
The front and rear bearings on that transmission are ball bearing, and that’s important, because if those bearings let loose, the pieces could end up in the transmission sump. Since your part isn’t a bearing ball, it’s not from there.
The only roller bearings in the transmission are encased in two spots- as a bearing set between the input shaft and main shaft, and as a bearing set inside the secondary shaft. Before a roller could make it’s way outside either location, a shaft would have to be blown apart. I’m talking chunks of metal the size of walnuts.
To further assure you, there’s this- During the assembly process, the tech uses grease to hold a dozen or more rollers in place inside each shaft. It’s quite easy for one to drop out during this process. If it does, the remaining eleven or so rollers still work perfectly well and the escaped part resides in the sump. Not some thing I recommend, but it does happen.
It’s pretty easy to explain the broken nature of the part as well- Sometime in the life of the transmission, it fell between two parts and boom! If there’s anything to worry about, it’s the damage related to this event.
I know it’s tough to see shattered metal come out of the transmission and just shrug it off, but the only way for one roller to end up in the case sump is that it’s been there since the transmission was assembled.
Thank you Dave! This is exactly what I was hoping for, a good explanation as well as the assurance that I don’t need to worry. Double thank you!
And of course this is why I posted it here, in the hopes that someone would be able to explain this properly. And it really makes sense, in terms of there not being any realistic way for a roller bearing to jump out of its cage inside those shafts, even if it broke in half, which si very unlikely.
The old-school transmission guy that installed it said he got it from his collection “out back”. I’m pretty sure he “rebuilt it”, as it was painted bright red and looked like it had been apart. So presumably it happened then, 25 years ago. And it works a swell today as it did then.
Thanks a third time!
You’re welcome, and here’s hoping I’m right…
I did find an image of the secondary shaft showing the bearings prior to installation, to help illustrate my text above.
This is not a T-85 image, but the principles are the same. Once installed, the rollers are inside the gear cluster (the red boxes) and the cluster is sandwiched by the walls of the transmission case (the blue lines). Clearly, there’s no path out.
In fact, these rollers normally fail due to lack of lubrication, and rather than shattering, grind themselves to dust.
Here’s a picture showing a typical set of rollers in an input shaft. The main shaft nose fits in the space highlighted in yellow, and a shoulder on that shaft locks the rollers in place.
Thanks for these. I did run across this exploded view of a T-85 on the web this morning after I posted this, and saw the roller bearings, but didn’t properly understand how they are held in place.
RWD Manual transmissions are very simple mechanically (there’s basically 3 moving parts), but to maximize case strength the parts become a 3-D puzzle. It’s very hard to visualize relationships from a 2-D illustration.
What Dave said. The abuse this old Ford stuff could take is the stuff of legends and when you have an old beater, part of the fun is not paying for anything and taking a chance every time you drive it.
My opinion is to just keep driving it. It will probably be fine for several more years. Since you don’t take it far, a tow wouldn’t be the end of the world.
All the parts to rebuild this transmission are available off the shelf and any competent transmission shop could rebuild it at a reasonable cost. That’s if you think $1000 is reasonable!
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I speculate that you broke the overriding clutch which holds you on a hill in (most likely)manual (forced 1) low on a hill from a stop. If that’s the case it’s not a big deal.
I guess I missed if is a automatic or a standard. Scratch that… if manual then do the back up lights work?
Back up lights? It never had any. Now if I could just get my turn signal lights to work….
I second the motion to run a magnet on a stick up into the transmission case and see if there are any more pieces in there. You should be able to re-use the gear oil, might want to filter it. We broke some gear teeth on a tractor transmission once, and were impressed with how many little pieces were still in there after draining the gear oil. After getting out all the pieces we could, we felt a little better about running it into we could get the tractor to the shop. Sounds like this was a rogue roller bearing and there is no chance of others following it, but you might have a little more peace of mind knowing that you did all you could to remove all the pieces that were in there.