T-20 Clutch Moving???

[fulleraviation]

Hey Guy's,

Noticed that my lower driven clutch on the T-20 has about 3/8" of play on it. When I rev the engine in neutral you can watch it walk back and forth. I dont remember it doing that when it was new.

I have been running it and watching it.. It seems to run fine.

Suggestions...

Thanks,
Rutledge

[micmac]

Hey Rut,

I would check to see if the retaining bolt is tight, if so you probably are good to go. Some T-20's have some play at the clutch however I was thinking it was only on the older ones.

Mike

[fulleraviation]

Hey,

Thanks for the reply. The retaining bolt is tight. I talked with Richard at Richards Relics. He said 3/8" is probably the max allowable and about 1/4" is normal/new tollerance.
I am just going to keep running it till I have an issue or other reason to pull the tranny.

I just hat to see it floop in and out, but oh well...

[amphibious drew]

fuller,
Did you buy your machine new??? The reason I ask is, if your t-20 was rebuilt buy a townie like mine, you could have the wrong bearing on your output shaft. I actually changed my belt because it looked like there was a lot of play in it, only to find out later someone shoved a generic bearing in the output shaft. If it wasn't caught when it was, the whole case could have been destroyed...Just a thought.

[Bw6]

Fuller,

Here is my recent experience with your identical problem. I had the same amount of play around 3/8" (in and out), and as I rev'd it you could watch it move in and out, everything else seemed ok, so I drove it that way. Well after about 3 hours of hard riding, I now had about 1" of play, tried to make it back to the shop, but lost drive on one side. Got towed back. When I opened it up, to see the problem here is what I found. The "C" clip had come off the end of the input shaft, and it (of course) found it's way into the ring gear, mashed itself into the gear teeth. Lucky (its all relative) that the "C" clip was was softer than the ring gear, so it didn't really do any major damage.

This is what caused the problem (I think). Wear on the part where the "tabbed washer" goes (forgot the name) allowed play on the input shaft causing it to move in and out. After enough of those movements (1,000's) it knocked the "C" clip off the end of the input shaft. My temporary fix was to add additional tabbed washers (without the tab) to fill the gap. Installed a new "C" clip, and now I have almost zero play.