Have a friend having a problem with one of his T's. New bands under a 1000 miles ago. Lately will drive 10 +/- miles, all flat ground with three stop signs. Maybe in low gear one - two minutes total trip. Had adjusted the bands prior to drive. Upon getting home, no matter how hard he pushes on the low gear peddle, the band is slipping enough the car won't engage a low. The band will also need to be adjusted again. This has happened more then once. He says the other bands stay adjusted. By the opinion of a local expert he removed one disk from the clutch pack which helped. He is thinking of putting in kavlar bands. Any ideas? I will pass them along.

Check the lining on the band,it's most likely worn out. Does he not have any adjustment on the clutch fingers? Seems like taking out the one clutch disc would be wrong way to go?

I believe he said that when this first started happening, it was discovered that one disk had to be removed. That there were to many disk. He said that he has a strong nutral,strong reverse, strong brake. Yes he has room to adjust fingers and had done so during time all this started.

One of my cars did this same thing and when I pulled the band out ,all the lining was gone on the bottom half of band. I relined it and so far ,so good.

Thank you, I will pass that along.

Cotton bands require quite a few adjustments right after they are put in. When they finally get seated in, they will go quite a while before adjusting again.
Bob

Tyrone,

That happened to me about 15 years ago and that is when I learned to not allow anyone to clean up the transmission drums. The re-builder decided to clean them up by turning them and they worn out the Kevlar bands very quickly with lots of lint and eventually cracked because they were too thin.

If the drum is cracked it eats bands even faster.

Regards, Roland

What Bob said about cotton bands I found to be true. Plus, if you are just learning to drive the car, my first set of cotton bands only lasted about 4 months. The next set several years. I finally replaced the bands with kevlar. I do not like them as they are rough engaging.

Love my wood ones. They chattered for a while, but now no adjustments and very smooth

Vince

The new scandinavia bands are known to be total junk. If that's what your friend is using then that explains it. I've had some small bit experience with them myself and they do appear to be useless. As already stated, also look for cracks in the brake drum.

Cotton bands also dry rot, if water leaks into the transmission through a heli-coil insert, block crack or bad head gasket. Kevlar bands do not dry rot.

I had exactly the same problem, after installing New Old Stock Scandinavia Bands that had been in the box for over 20 years. The rot may have already started when they were installed too.

A friend also had the same problem when the pin that held the clutch pedal to the shaft sheared.