If you all remember, I have a Telma on my Bluebird bus and I was so impressed with it that I decided to stick one on my Crown. Knowing it was going to be a nasty job, I decided to do it anyway. Here's how it went....not for the timid...
First, Crowns have a very short driveshaft, and there's not room to stick a standard "axial" Telma in there. So it would have to be one called "focal" that mounts right on the rear end pinion housing. I called Telma and as I expected, there was nothing available for my old Crown's axle. So that meant that to do this I'd either have to machine the Telma onto my current axle (a nasty engineering job that I could do but didn't necessarily want to) or completely replace the axle with a compatible one. Plus one other hitch, my driveline was already at 8 degrees and gave a bit of vibration when in throttle "float" around 70mph. The Focal Telma eats another 5" of driveline so even that wouldn't work as the newer-shorter driveline would be even steeper....Ok..
I called on my buddie Paul at Valley Truck in Fresno and asked him what he thought. Amazingly he'd just gotten in a wrecked truck that had a Meritor RH23160 axle, which is a weird "high pinion" version that has it's pinion shaft about 5-6 inches higher than a normal one. Hmmm... seems like that'd work.
It gets deeper...
Turns out that the RH axle is only available in a few gear ratios, and 5.29 wasn't one of them. In fact the highest ratio available was only 4.11. Since I'd earlier put in an RTXO13609 that has overdrive (which perfectly compensates for the lousy 5.29 and allows me to do 75-80 with ease) this means that the tranny would also have to go- I'd need one without overdrive.
Ugh. So I talked to Paul some more and found out that he'd just gotten in a brand new Eaton 6406A (well, 50 miles on it) that I could buy for a very good price, which is a fully synchronized 6 speed, no overdrive, and quite a bit less weight than my current tranny. Things were starting to fall together. If I changed out to that 6 speed, I would be loosing a few gear choices going up grades, but the trade would be that for the first time, maybe someone besides me would be able to drive the bus... NObody seemed to be able to figure out how to drive that 9 speed but me...so NObody would drive the bus. Fully synchronized would take care of that in a heartbeat!!
So that's how I decided to go... change out both the rear axle and the tranny. Next problem was that I don't have flat ground or big enough equipment to do that by myself here, so I gave Don Fairchild (in Bakersfield) a call and he said sure, bring it up.
So I purchased them and had em delivered to Don Fairchild's place.
The first little glitch was that the 6406 shift box was not compatible with my gearshift mechanism. The Crown originally had a two-rod deal that I replaced with a more modern 1-rod setup, where the rod pushes and pulls, as well as twists to shift the gears. The cover that came with the 6406 was some weird thing that used cables and a rod, and obviously wasn't even close to what I needed. But I figured out that if I were to saw that mechanism in half and weld it to half of a 13609 mechanism, I could get what I needed. So that I did.
Two weeks ago I took the Telma up to Don's place where the tranny and axle were waiting, and installed the Telma. It was a fairly straightforward job- Telma provided excellent shop manuals and although there are some tricky steps (like spot facing the pinion housing so that the Telma mounts absolutely flat to the housing) it all went well. Back home I came for a few days...
The next thing was the shaft of the tranny. Turned out that my 13609 has a 2" input shaft and the new tranny is 1-3/4", which means I have to change the clutch and pilot bearing. I have a 2 disc Lipe that I really liked as it is the easiest clutch I've EVER pushed on, even easier than all my cars, and I was hoping I could just change the discs to 1-3/4" ones...but I forgot about the throw-out bearing that also has to have a smaller hole, so that meant an entirely new clutch. I went to the good guys at Southland Clutch (San Diego local) and they told me that the only thing I could get that would work with the smaller input shaft was a 2 disc Spicer, and they had it in stock. So I fetched it.
Last week I drove the Crown up and got started on the major push. The trip went a bit strange as I'd just changed injectors but there was still something wrong as I only had about 80% of the power I ought to. More on that later...
Don myself and my helper Rick started at it and soon enough the Crown was up on Jackstands, wheels were off and the rear end was out. Quite a monster job, that in itself. Next the Tranny came out, so far so good.
Got the new clutch in just fine and then we installed the new tranny. Well almost... even with all the homework I'd done, we found that it wouldn't go in as it should. It was about then that Don noticed that the stupid tranny bellhousing was 2" smaller in diameter than the engine. OUCH, wrong bellhousing size. SAE2 vs SAE1...not a good combination!!!
So I called Paul back at Valley and to my dismay found that the 6406 isn't made with an SAE1 housing. Back on the internet, my saviour was a cool company, Phoenix castings, who happens to make stock bellhousing adapters, and fortunately they make one that sticks an SAE2 tranny onto an SAE1 flywheel housing with no offset. Saved!@!
Days later the adapter got there and once again we installed the tranny...again... All was well except that the new clutch is about the hardest thing I've ever pushed in my life. In fact it hurt my leg to push the thing and was TOTALLY unacceptable. SO I called the clutch folks back and after a long conversation finally just took the tranny out *again* and sent the clutch back to San Diego to see what was wrong with it. Nothing. Except that it was a diaphragm style whereas the Lipe I had was a pure coil-spring design, other than that it "should" have been just fine. But I insisted that I didn't want it back so the cool guys at Southland decided that they could use parts from this and that and "build" me a custom Lipe style clutch!!! Only a couple hours later the new clutch was back on it's way to me and immediately installed when it arrived. Happily it was a success, and even easier to push than my old lipe, since it was a bit smaller than the old one was. Lesson? If you want an EXTREMELY easy to push clutch, get a dual plate Lipe. The difference between it and a Spicer diaphragm is NOT subtle.
SO at long last, the tranny was in for the last time and now it was time to install the axle. Other than needing a bunch of new bolts, having the springs re-arced and moving very carefully so as not to have a giant bus fall on us, it went in without incident. Everything fit, and the job turned out quite happily.
We took it on a test run and what we'd done worked perfectly. I have a few things to iron out but nothing major.
The engine is another story. Back at the last Burning Man an injector had gone south, so I replaced all 6 with fresh rebuilts. In that process I put the engine back together on a cold day when I was in a lousy mood and totally screwed up- I'd forgotten to put the engine in correct positions when adjusting them, instead I just torqued them all down with the engine in the same spot. Since they are supposed to be individually adjusted at each cylinder's TDC, this resulted in 4 of the 6 being adjusted to almost twice as tight as they should have been. The result wasn't disasterous but it did leave the thing running rough and still not the power it should be. So I probably killed a few of the new injectors with my mistake, but time ran out so the bus is still up at Don's, waiting until either of us have some free time to take it all apart and try again. Cummins 220 injectors are not a piece of cake to replace... you have to take the intake manifold and the rocker boxes off, so it's a long messy job. Fortunately I bagged a set of freshly "Cummins rebuilt" injectors from ebay so at least I have the parts. Silly me.
I'll post some photos as soon as I have a chance to unload the camera..
And FWIW, on my "Extremely good guys" list is Don Fairchild, Paul at Valley Truck, and all ofthe guys at Southland clutch. They all went out of their way to help and without their excellent assistance this could have been a total nightmare...
Fun with the Crown....
gary
