MTFCA Forum

Good evening Forum Chums

I’m trying to upload a YouTube link to the video of my 27 T…… I hope it works… good grief, I can a 122 million dollar airplane, but can’t upload a video…lol!

Here goes!

https://youtu.be/b_5CyTvX9fM

I believe it IS backlash. Turn over slowly & I think you will find that point.
You have not removed the timing cover, so you dont know how much extra gear lash is present.
You can check for the worn gears by using a long screwdriver thru the oil filler. You will just be able to see the cam gear. wiggle it with the screwdriver. You may have to turn the motor to a spot that is more neutral for the cam. Right after the click. There should be almost NO perceptible movement.
Before when you had it running, you didnt perceive the lash so much as the noise was more continuous. The siren song of a T motor.

Ford built a lot of inline 6 cylinder engines from the mid 1960s through at least 1991 with timing gears. The gears made noise from day one. These engines had hydraulic lifters and cam-driven oil pumps, but the gears still rattled.

The original iron gears were fit tight & were fairly quiet until they wore.
Since this is not a full motor restoration, you may not need to "fix" the noise. Depends how sloppy the gear fit is.
The noise is a real common trait in a model T. Unless real bad, i'd probably leave it alone.

I had a camshaft that had .007 runout on the gear end and it made the same knocking noise for 100,000 miles before I finally figured out the problem, you might check for that, I also had a fan pulley with end play make a similar noise. Good luck.