Ford Tractor Teardown, Repair, and Discussion

Don't know if anyone on here would be interested in this or not but I thought I would post it. My dad farms/ranches and we run mostly Ford tractors so I'm fairly familiar with many of the Ford tractors built from 65-89.

A little backstory on this tractor:
This is a Ford TW15 Series II (Produced 1986-89) my dad bought about 10 years ago with about 3700 hrs on it, we didn't notice until after we bought it that the PTO would not stop turning unless something was attached to it (PTO brake did not work). Since fixing it required splitting the tractor between the transmission and rear axle and since we really didn't use the PTO much we didn't really worry about it. A few years after we got it it started becoming increasingly difficult to get in and out of 1st/5th gear then not too long after 2nd/6th gear, we used it for a little while like that until the Dual Power solenoid crapped out leaving it with basically 4 usable gears.
For those not familiar most Ford tractors have 4 forward and 1 reverse gear in 2 ranges for a total of 8 forward and 2 reverse speeds, the medium to larger tractors also had an optional underdrive/direct drive powershift unit (Ford called it Dual Power) in the front of the transmission that gave a high/low in each gear for a total of 16 forward and 4 reverse speeds.

We ended up parking it for quite awhile due to not having the time to investigate and fix it, I recently decided I was gona see what was going on with it.

Started by pulling the shifting mechanism off the side of the transmission, it soon became apparent that somebody had been in there before as there was a dowel missing and some brazing had been done to the top of the shift forks.


Looked a little closer and found the 1-2 shift fork was cracked and also had a visible dab of brass on it.


At this point I knew the tractor was gona have to be split to fix it (not something I was looking forward to), looked in the service manual and found I had to split it in 2 places to remove the shift fork. It's recommended to take the cab off to remove the transmission but I don't have a way to lift it off so I decided to do it with the cab in place.

We built a splitting stand out of some channel iron, square tubing, and some heavy duty casters and I got to work at it


Started by getting everything blocked up with blocks and jack stands and getting all the hydraulic and A/C lines, electrical, front cab mounts, auxiliary fuel tank, and side plates disconnected and out of the way.




Removed all the bolts holding the transmission to the rear axle and installed long bolts for guides.


Hooked a come-along to the front and proceeded to pull it apart.






Rear of transmission.


Removing the High/Low section of the transmission.






High/Low gears removed.


Rear of transmission with High/Low section removed.


View of the broken fork from the top with the top cover removed.


Separating the transmission from the engine.






Dual Power unit removed.




Main countershaft, reverse idler, and broken fork removed.






Once I got it out it immediately became obvious that someone had broken it before and brazed it back together, why they did that instead of replacing it I don't know.


I also found the PTO clutch drum was completely shot where the brake disk rides and the brake disk MIA.


Next step was tracking down some parts, new parts were out of the question (the shift fork is over $700 new and the PTO clutch drum is over $1200 new if they can even be found), called some salvage yards and tracked down a good used shift fork but could not find a clutch drum for a reasonable price (the drum wearing around the brake disk is apparently a common issue). We have a TW20 flat deck sitting around that my dad bought for salvage so I decided to drag it out and split it hoping to get a good PTO clutch/brake set out of it.












I got lucky and it was all in good shape aside from a bit of rust.







Had to get over $500 in new parts between all the gaskets, seals, o-rings, and dual power solenoid (tractor parts are not cheap and most stuff is only available OE).

Parts in hand reassembly began...

Shift fork installed.


Main countershaft & reverse idler installed.


High/Low shift fork, collar, & park pawl installed.


High/Low Gearset installed.


Base transmission assembled.


Installing/assembling the Dual Power unit.












PTO clutch/brake assembled.


Putting the transmission back on the engine.

 

Rolling it back together.













Auxiliary fuel tank mounting pin was seized so I had to drill that out.


Back in one piece again, shifts great again and PTO works like it's supposed to so far.
Haven't used it much yet as I'm still waiting on a hydraulic line that's leaking we had swapped out on it when we weren't using it, currently it's backordered with no estimated ship date.


If anyone else out there wants to share their Ford tractor pics, ask questions, or comment on this feel free, I like seeing Ford tractors that are still in service (don't see too many of them around anymore).

 

Thanks for the posts. Great job. This is the kind of stuff I like to see on automotive forums.

 

This is cool. Bummer the original repair was shit

 

Yea from what we understand it was a dealer trade in and the guy we bought it from bought it from the dealer so I'm assuming someone broke it, patched it up, and traded it in.
I'm not sure how they managed to break a shift fork as I have never seen or heard of any major issues with the Ford 8 speed tractor transmission and I've been around them all my life, my grandpa had 2 7700s and 2 9700s 2 of them had well over 10,000 hrs on them with zero transmission issues.

 

Some people manage to fuck up steel balls

 

For sure, I've seen so many things that make me wonder how did they manage to do that