170 Franklin Forwarder

[bmwood]

We are having trouble with oil leaking in the bell housing.  We rebuilt the transmission and torque converter and it still leaks.  One mechanic said the torque converter needed the pressure adjusted but we cant find anywhere to adjust the pressure.  Not sure what is going one.  This is one of those Franklins made when Franklin Inc was putting all manner of parts in the machines so the manual is no help at all.

[kiko]

All franklins i have encountered have a wet converter, so oil in the bell housing is normal.  silcone must be used where convertor housing mounts to flywheel housing,  a double lip rear main seal and a sealed starter.

[bmwood]

The bell housing is overflowing with oil.  It has too much oil for the scavenger pump to keep it empty.  Is there an adjustment to the pumps to slow down the flow or speed up the scavenger pump?  When you start to speed up the oil actually squirts out the top of the bell housing.

[kiko]

Torque converter scavenge pump flow 2 gpm @ torque converter stall speed . scavenge pump rated at 6 gpm.  trans charge pump for p4276 trans 13 to 15 gpm at full throttle.  p4376 trans 18 to 20 gpm at full throttle.  these are gear pumps so flow is only variable with engine speed. Has the torque converter breather been addressed?  Also it is possible for some of the trans pump flow to be entering the tc through the shaft seal on the trans pump.   

  

  

 

[bmwood]

We made sure the breather wasn't stopped up.  We are going to take the torque converter out and check the seals on it.  We bought a torque converter that was "rebuilt" and I think he forgot the rebuilt part.  Thanks so much for the pressure charts  very helpful.  I am looking for another 170 forwarder if you know of someone who has one for sale.  Thanks again.

[kiko]

There is only one internal seal in that style torque converter and it is actually a metal ring seal located on the stator shaft.  If this problem existed on both converters the odds are it is not that seal ring dumping .  It would be worth the trouble in my opinion to explore the possibility of a plugged trans cooler.  This could be accomplished by hooking the houses and temporally by passing cooler,  if the cooler was partially plugged enough to create excessive internal leakage it should also show pressure out of range high for converter charge pressure.

[bmwood]

Thanks we will try that this morning.