1962 Hawk Automatic Transmission

[mjeansonne]

My wife's '62 Hawk has the Flight-O-Matic transmission. She hasn't had it but about a year and is waiting for me to get to cleaning up the body and repainting it. The engine seals have probably dried up too, so the engine leaks oil, like a seave! As a result, we don't drive it very often.

My primary concern at this time is that the tranmission doesn't seem to want to go into reverse. I have to try several times to put the shift into reverse, then sometimes it will grab and sometimes it won't. Also the transmission doesn't seem to want to tranmit much power. For instance, I tried to back it up into the garage with a bit of an incline, and have to take a running start to get it in there.

Automatic transmissions are not my cup of tea, and doubt there are any transmission mechanics that are familiar with this tranmission.

Any suggestions?

[Peter in London]

My Speedster's ('55) automatic transmission has always seemed weak when in reverse, I suspect even after gearbox restoration. I wonder whether anybody with more technical knowledge has any observations on this? In manual cars, reverse was often the lowest gear and on very steep hills some people had to take them backwards even in the early days of my lifetime.

And I remember that my father's '30 Daimler Light 15 with a pre-selector (epicyclic) gearbox (and "fluid flywheel") was very reluctant to go into reverse. Fortunately the "R" position on the pre-selector lever was at the bottom of the range and the leaver could be banged down to the bottom repeatedly until it engaged. You could tell when it did, because the clutch pedal came up far further than with any other gear when it was engaged in reverse. The jump from Neutral to Reverse was quite alarming as they had the shortest and longest movements of the clutch pedal respectively.

[Transtar60]

The automatic transmision in your Hawk is the Borg-Warner automatic and is very similiar to the Ford C-4. Having said that, usually cars that sit and dont get driven regularly sometimes leak down to the point where the tranny wont engage. I have couple cars around here like that, have to put a couple quarts in everytime I want to move them around.

Check the fluid(I dont know if the '62 Hawk has the dipstick under the hood or under the panel on the passenger side of the tranny tunnel).
It needs to be checked in drive,(with parking brake applied) at idle.
Probably best done with someone holding the brake too, just in case.