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Hello all,

Recently I picked up a junky Twin Ultramatic for pretty cheap (the one from my What's it worth? thread). I have been reading up thoroughly on the Ultramatic recently so I figured I'd disassemble this to familiarize myself with them more. Of course, I already have a couple questions:

- Is is just me or is this a comical amount of sludge? Looks like a whole clutch worth, or is there another explanation (old fluid + condensation)?

- How do I extract these oil tubes? Do I just need ultra thin tip pliers?

P.S. In case anyone is thinking "why waste your time repairing that, it's worthless": to me it is an educational opportunity, not a repair-worthy part. Thanks everyone.

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Driving the car like it is a race car, excess heat if the cooler failed or the high range clutches were slipping, water contamination or wrong fluid, bad adjustments, no routine maintenance and maybe even sitting for half a century can all cause the sludge. Does the old fluid and sludge have the nauseating rancid stink like it was burned?

On the tubes, the photos shows how to remove them and a thin needle nose plier or a pair of forceps should do it.

After extensively huffing inspecting the odor of the trans fluid for the requisite amount of time, I'd say it has a fairly nauseating, burnt smell, but not extremely so.

I have the transmission out of this car. Even in 2009 the guy was complaining of a stuck engine so I'd wager the trans has not seen action for 40-odd years.

Thanks for the advice Howard but I still can't get those darn tubes out, even with various pliers and picks. I'll dig into something else tomorrow.

E-Z outs are your friend, or in the case of those, a 1/4" tap.

Great tip, Ross. A 1/4-28 tap, threaded half a turn in, worked perfectly.

To be continued tomorrow...

(Not sure why the low band drum asy came out with the bell housing. Must have been snagged on it or something.)

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Made some good progress today. The only things I finished up the day still stuck on are:

- Removing the throttle valve inner lever (fig. 35). No matter what I could not get it to budge coming out. Is there a step missing or...?

- I still could not remove the input shaft from the front pump body. Has it rusted out of tolerance, or am I missing something on how it is to be removed?

Also, what is the normal hardness of the band linings? The same "dentable" feel as the direct drive clutch, or much harder? These linings seem to have the hardness of, say, aluminum. Edit: Apparently this is normal.

P.S. I found a 1/2-20 tap to work well for removing the larger governor tube.

Well, rust expands the volume of steel by a factor of 9. You will have to do what we refer to here as the "Michael Jackson":

Just beat it.

That's what I figured. Just wanted to make sure I was not doing some accidental metallurgy on anything of significance. Actually I have already been hammering away a bit with a dead blow; I might try to blast the rust off with a steel wire wheel before trying again.

As we all know, it's easier to ask for help before the fact than to deal with the consequences of your own ignorance after the fact. Not that I have ever been in that situation though.

Regarding that rusty shaft, to my surprise, just blasting the rust off with a rotary steel wire brush was enough to get it to go through. For reference, some 30-odd solid hits with a 2# dead blow would only get it about halfway through yesterday.

I disassembled and reassembled both pumps and the planetary assembly today. Both pumps were in great shape and within tolerance, but I found some broken parts in the planetary assembly area. Specifically one of the low band mounts and one of the damper leaf springs for the ring gear. How common is it for these things to break? It's hard to imagine the low band mount receiving too much stress unless maybe there was tons of engine flare in the high to low shifts? The leaf spring I would assume is just normal fatigue.

I noticed the gearset to have a significant amount of flash rusting in various places. Which I ignored... 🙈 I also found a significant amount of what I could most closely describe as dried aluminum anti sieze under the thin metal plate on the planetary assembly. Is that normal? I can't think of why such a thing would end up there, even from wear. It was metallicy gray colored paste essentially.

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