MTFCA Forum

Recently my sister's 1913 touring suffered from "failure to procced" in high gear.
Once I figured out it required more than a simple adjustment, I dug into it to correct the problem.
I pulled this junk out, that someone had installed in place of a perfectly good Ford clutch pack.
The internal driven plates were original Ford.
The external driven plates were made of woven material. The drive dogs were notched into the woven material!
5 of the 6 woven plates had the drive dogs completely worn away & one had a crack!
Makes me wonder about the replacement spring as well.
Genuine Ford parts will be used to put the car back in service.

Looks like a Watts clutch set including spring. Only the 1 large disk was doing all the lockup!
Were the other large disks modified or worn that way? Wow.
That spring is a known failure point in the Watts modification. Definitely chuck the spring also.
"Improvement" fail. I have heard of many Watts failures, but never saw the friction material so jacked.

First time I've seen a watts clutch fail, is your sister when driving backing the throttle off between low to high change?

Part of the attraction of the Watts clutch was it could be used on a worn drum & within reason I think it works well I like the one I'm running
very much. I'm thinking that one needed a drum replacement @ the time of installation. I would very much like to see the lugs on the drum.
Things like that are why a trans screen is a good idea. Pieces that show up in the screen will most likely warn you that somethings going on.
I found a piece of ford clutch disc in my screen magnet that lead to the discovery of many broken clutch discs. I also change my oil just after
running the engine. Into a clean drain pan & inspect the oil that came out for anything that should not be loose in the engine by straining it
through a paint strainer then looking @ the drain pan for for flakes of brass, Babbitt, gear teeth chips, band material.
Craig.