MTFCA Forum

Bands and their care and feeding is just about perennial a topic as "which oil" and water pumps.

Scandinavia linings have ceased to be available in any quality, leaving wood and kevlar as the only choices one can buy. Going back into the archives, posts were made a few years ago noting how some remembered old timers having re-lined bands with harness leather. No comments I found included any sort of "performance review", alas.

Thinking on it, it seems to me leather offers an alternative that should be equally serviceable as wood, perhaps better, and more economical than kevlar. Have any of our members ever used leather ? If so, please tell us your experience with it !

The only place I have used leather is very thick leather oil soaked and well greased as shims in the ball joints. It works well for that purpose. It might be hard to find leather with uniform thickness which would work for bands, but someone else might have experience with it.
I have Kevlar in 2 T's and wood in the third. The wood tends to chatter more than the Kevlar. The Kevlar works well as long as it is kept loose enough not to drag on the bands and cause them to collapse. I had a problem with one T which had Kevlar and shattered a drum. The car stopped right where it was and could not even be pushed. I had to get a floor jack to jack up one rear wheel to winch it onto a trailer. Found the problem was a worn notch and cam in the clutch pedal shaft. Replaced both those and have not had any more problems with the Kevlar. One other thing to be aware of is the band lining must be tight against the band between the rivets. This is done by starting with the correct length leaving about a 3/6 inch longer than the band and put in the rivets closest to the end of the bands. Then work the band material toward the canter and it will lay flat against the band. The band must be perfectly round too. And lastly the drum surface should be quite smooth with no cracks in the drum. After that leave the band loose enough so the drum will spin easily but tighten completely without slippage when you depress the pedal.
Norm

I have 10 T's and each has Kevlar bands. Don't over tighten them and drive appropriately and they are a one time band change. If you want to try leather find someone who can supply retanned leather like was used for leather cone clutch material. It's tough stuff but I would think that it would slip too much in a full oil bath. These days even the guys with cone clutches are switching to Kevlar. I think 95% of the issues with Kevlar are excessive drag and the resultant heat or drums that were already cracked and just waiting to collapse.

I'll be going to bonded linings when my stock of Scandinavian linings runs out. They were popular here a while back and seem to give very good service.
Reports from the time mention the clutch action can be rather sudden, when leather was used for cone clutches. So would be interesting to see how it works for a T given the constant oil bath.

By '07 Buick has a cone clutch lined with leather. It seems to have been there a long time and works very well. It was designed to run dry but the leakage from the components around it keep it pretty well oiled. You know as much about leather in other things as anybody I know.
Of course, I've always said Kevlar was bulletproof.

Leather will work good and get you home for a rod bearing insert but my thinking is that it might not have enough gripping power for the oil soaked bands.

I hate to be the devil's advocate, but why not just use wood or cotton? or even use a different type of lining for the different functions? like Kevlar or wood for the low and reverse and cotton for the brake? my thinking is that cotton wouldn't heat up as much and would be gentler on the drum. Kevlar would be good for the low band since it would only have to clamp down on the drum and hold it still, so not much heat to worry about. Reverse wouldn't be used much and would likely receive more slippage and heat in situations like parking or rocking the T out of sand. so wood or cotton would seem better than Kevlar in that circumstance. That's just my theory anyway.

If you drive a lot and like to change bands cotton is fine but changing bands is not my favorite things to do and that's why I switched to Kevlar. As far as leather is concerned, cone clutches will grab unless they are oiled slightly with neats foot oil but they will start slipping terribly if over oiled and require dusting with diatomaceous earth as a cure. Can't see how it would ever work in a T.