MTFCA Forum

Hi all
I have been helping my friend Bob Benner work on his TT truck that he acquired earlier this year. It is a work in progress that he hopes to give a new life and use as a truck around his farm also to give hayrides and take to the occasional parade and such. It has a ruckstell rear end that I believe has the five to one gears in it. It has the later Style shift lock assembly so at this point I am assuming it's a later model rear end. After we initially got it running the rear end seemed to shift as it should. Since then Bob has been working on it and learning to drive it around his farm, now the problem is that the rear end does not want to go into high gear only low gear and the dreaded neutral that we understand it should not really have. We have not started the teardown yet it is still under the truck, work should start sometime in the near future. My question to those of you TT truck owners or others who have worked on these truck ruckstell rear ends, we are wondering what the more common causes of this problem might be and what we should be looking for. I am familiar with the standard car rear ends but haven't been into a ruckstell yet. Bob has the Ruckstell axle book written by Glenn Chaffin and I have started to read through it to familiarize myself. Also wondering if anyone manufactures replacement parts for these rear ends or if we need parts are we looking primarily for good used parts. Also to those that will tell us these rear ends should have auxiliary brakes Bob has already ordered and received Rocky Mountain brakes that we will be installing as part of this rebuild. Thank you in advance for any input and insights you may be able to give to us with this project.

Tom: I can't say if this you friends problem with his TT Ruckstell using the later type shift lock, but it is easy to check. The late type car shift lock has a spring loaded plunger with a roller and the roller is held in the proper orientation with a pin in the shifter housing. On a speedster with a 1926 Ruckstell that I had, the orientation pin broke off allowing the shift roller to rotate on it's own. It got harder to shift and finely locked up in low. When the adjustment plug and spring were removed to check, the roller plunger was almost 90 degrees to normal, no rolling was possible, there for no shifting.

The high gear is locked in by a narrow set of splines in the slider and two outer splines. Loss of high gear and too much neutral often means someone in the past abused the shifting and not enough of the splines are left to hold high gear. Sometimes, they can be made to work for a short while, then they begin to fail, and get really bad fast. The only real repair is replacement of the worn spline pieces, usually including the big bronze piece.
Parts are made for the car Ruckstells, however, I don't think they are made for the TT version.
A good gear/machine shop may be able to weld up the splines and re-cut them.

Here are a couple of other threads with pics. I tore my shift lock assembly apart and checked it using this information and that found in the book you bought. I believe the truck and car shift lock assemblies are the same. It will give you an idea of what could be in there. I think I've read where if the little spring pack is broken that will also cause it to pop out of gear so to speak.

http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/80257/85123.html
http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/50 ... 1233127236
http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/80 ... 1261354699

Hi all
Thank you for the input so far , to clarify a little bit the problem we seem to be having is it doesn't go into high gear at all no grinding no high gear we have low and then a neutral which I think I understand really isn't supposed to be there but no high. Matthew thank you for the links to the other threads I will read them when I get a chance maybe I'll find something in there. If anyone else has any other input it would be appreciated probably won't be till next week before I get to look at it thanks to all.

Could be a broken bronze gear casting. That broke on my TT and I had the same problem - no more standard drive, only low.
It also gives a nasty 'neutral' if you shift into standard, no braking either in that case.
Tear down and see if you can replace the casting if possible. It usually cracks near the hub (see picture).

A MUST is to get the MTFCA booklet on Ruckstell rebuild. FOLLOW it carefully and you won't go wrong.

Note, Ruckstell has 'standard Ford direct' and 'Ruckstell Low', so there is not really a 'high' as such.

I meant to add, if you have the later long nose shifter, that is a plus. Better spring tension to keep the selector engaged.

Adrian
Thank you for the correction and the pictures I knew in my head it should be termed Ford standard and Ruckstell low but was writing high gear will try to keep the terminology correct. Once we start to get into it will keep you posted as to what we find.

Thank you Tom! Last night we took off the shift lock and cleaned up all the parts, reassembled with grease and voila, It shifted from low ruckstell to high just fine. Probably hadn’t been looked at in fifty years! Parts were seized, rusty, and in need of care. A little TLC and it shifts again.
I must thank Tom. Without him I would be nowhere near my goal of a reliable TT. He has been a godsend! Thanks Tom and for this group fo getting us together.

Whew! That is a good find!
Nothing like a bit of grease to smooth the way