One of the issues I have had with the truck is losing gear oil from the rear end through the torque tube and into the transmission. This is caused by the rake of the car which means the torque tube is sloping down from rear to front. It's something I have put up with but having to 'recycle' oil from the trans back into the axle was getting a bit 'old'! One solution is to fit a Tardel baffle into the torque tube which is basically a tube within a tube, sealed at the end, that acts as a reservoir for the escaping oil that allows it to drain back when it can. My truck had one of these fitted but for whatever reason it didn't work. Here is a pic after I got it out, it is simply tacked into the end of the torque tube with a bit of sealer around it. Here is a pic of the torque tube and drive shaft. These seem to have been shortened at some point and the coupler is no longer used which probably made this modification a little easier. I wanted to fit a proper oil seal and just happened to have a few knocking about that had exactly the right internal diameter to fit snugly over the drive shaft. I then had a collar made that fitted inside the torque tube and was a good resistance fit for the external diameter of the oil seal. It also had a shoulder on the inside towards the end for the oil seal to locate on. Next job was to weld the collar into the end of the torque tube. I decided to run weld all the way around the cir***ference, instead of just tacking it in a few spots like the baffle was, as I didn't want to use sealer and wanted to make sure no oil could get past. Here it is welded in. No comments about the quality of the welding though! Then it was simply a case of tidying up the welds and cleaning any splatter from the internal surface of the collar then knocking the oil seal in. I had a second collar made to help fitting the seal. Hopefully this will solve my problem and I wont have to go crawling under the truck so often! The last thing I will do is to put a vent into the axle as I have effectively sealed the rear end. Not sure how this would work with a coupler in place due to it's larger cir***ference and not having enough room for to fit a collar and oil seal but I thought you could possibly place the collar a little further down the torque tube past the coupler and hold it in place with grub screws through the sides of the tube. Anyway thought it may be useful.
Bruce's Rod Shop in Spring, Texas makes a driveshaft/torque tube seal that bolts between the banjo and torque tube flange. I've had one in my roadster for four years and sealed up great. Last price was $100.00, great part. Check at brucesrodshop.com
Sorry man, only just seen your reply. Yes it did help alot. No more crawling under the car to drain the excess oil out of the trans every 50 miles or so!
Hi, I know this is an old thread, but do you have a number for the seal and diameters of the tube? I know this is probably asking a lot ;-) Glenn
The Jalopy Journal
