AA radius ball

Russell Reay

Russell Reay

Well-known member
Last fall I put my car on the road, and for two months had no front end troubles--no wandering, no death wobble. This winter I changed to a AA bell housing, and I have way too much free play around the radius ball. I added a shim from one of our vendors, and even with the two nuts snugged tight to the spacers there is still some play around the ball. Is it possible that the AA bell casting is intended to accommodate a larger radius ball than the standard A ball ?? If so , what is the recommended solution?
 

Attachments

  • IMG_2329.jpg
    IMG_2329.jpg
    37.7 KB · Views: 69
The cap looks like it was part of the kit with the rubber ball. The bolts also look longer which are used on the rubber ball kit.
Also curious why you went with the AA bell housing, as they were for the 4 speed transmission.
 
The car originally (to me) had the rubber ball, but I discarded it in favor of the original configuration. I bought the replacement kit w/o the rubber ball (A 3440-S), and those are the bolts in the photo. The bolts that came with the AA bell were the same. The AA bell is for a T5 transmission.
 
The interior radius of the shims is for a much smaller ball than the 1.5" of the proper size ball. And the thickness of the shim is substantial - about 0.080". So as you can probably see from the picture, that shim is not acting as a shim, it's acting as a spacer.

My ball was worn about 0.040" (actual diameter was around 1.460"), but the wear was uneven. The lower portion of the ball fit snugly into its cup, but the upper portion rattled around a bit. What I did was to plug weld the shim to the upper side of the ball where the ball was worn, then grind/file/sand/polish back to the original 1.500" diameter. This then put back some space between the two cups when they were made up to each other, before they were flush.

I think I'm going to use some valve grinding compound to do a final burnish.

Photos - left is before showing asymmetric wear. Right is after. Plate is 3/16" steel bored to 1.5005".
 

Attachments

  • IMG_4607.jpg
    IMG_4607.jpg
    72.5 KB · Views: 27
  • IMG_4611.jpg
    IMG_4611.jpg
    57.6 KB · Views: 27
JW has it right.Ypou have the springs trying to push the cap away from the casting.You need those springs pushing the cap UP towards the housing.That cap should be riding up close enough to the casting so you really can't even see the ball.
 
Keith True said:
JW has it right.Ypou have the springs trying to push the cap away from the casting.You need those springs pushing the cap UP towards the housing.That cap should be riding up close enough to the casting so you really can't even see the ball.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the correction. It's amazing that when assembled correctly, everything fits nicely.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top