MTFCA Forum

on the forth main in the hub there is a hole.i just finished replacing the hogs head and bands with detachable ears, i would guess it should be up to catch the oil,but not knowing , i better ask. did not notice this on the take apart. quite some job out of the car, must be a sun of a gun in the car. hands the size of hams, no feeling in the right one, and the trick with the dental floss is priceless. i did find i used a word or two i didn't no i knew. sorry liz. i still love you.

Hole goes up. It should have a grease cup when all together. Some people substitute a zerk for the grease cup.

I think that you are asking about the 4 main, known as the ball cap, that is the area that the transmission output shaft runs on. The hole goes up so engine oil can get to the babbit bearing. This hole is inside of the transmission area and does not have a grease cup. The dtlveshaft to engine cap does have the big grease cup to lube the U joint. The U joint hole has to align with the hole in the drive shaft ball.

Be sure to keep plenty of grease in the universal joint and the front driveshaft bushing. They both have grease cups at the front of the driveshaft. The more grease you keep in those areas, the less oil will run down the driveshaft tube from the 4th main to the differential.

I’m in the habit of marking the top of the 4th main bearing flange with a file groove.
In the process of reinstalling the engine and trying to align the universal joint by cranking over the engine or spinning a wheel
this part can spin around and unless it’s marked you can’t be sure the hole is at the top.
Alan

good advice one and all, how simple this ford is, im retired now used to restore big cars, marmon stuz caddys an the like, always wanted a t, wish i could have got one sooner, i see why they are so loved. thank you again.

The thing about Model T's that a lot of people forget, is that you are basically working on a 1909 automobile. This machine goes back to nearly the start of automobiling. It is a simple car that has some really amazing engineering in it. No matter how late a year your Model T is, what you are looking at is a chassis and running gear from 1909.
People say there is no such thing as a time machine. They are wrong. Each of these early automobiles is a message, carrying what were the best ideas and plans of the men who engineered them, as well as they could. They are machines that travel through time, and even though we own them temporarily, they will eventually move on to someone else, as they physically move into the future. As old as our cars are, they will see hundreds of years into the future, beyond our time and comprehension.
So make sure you keep the grease cups filled.

I have a question that pertains to this thread. I was leaking a lot of oil from the ball cap area of the u-joint so I removed the floorboards and drove for a while. I noticed that when I started out in low gear, I would get a lot of movement between the ball and cap and the oil leak would worsen. I removed the cap and found a gasket on the cap side so I removed it and also added a shim from Lang's to remove the slop. I made sure the hole in the shim and ball were on the top. I filled the large u-joint grease cap with John Deere corn head grease and the large leak turned into a normal weep/drip. Ever since i did this, I'm getting a transmission gear noise low whine while driving that I didn't have before I did the above?

Bob: I suspect that while the shim improved the mechanical connection between the transmission and drive shaft tube assembly, it also enhanced the acoustic coupling of the parts, essentially 'turning up the volume' of sounds already present. Drive careful, jb