Well, I have had an interesting weekend with my Lark. I will give the "condensed version" here:
I bought the lark about two and a half years ago, and noticed after a few months of driving a...whine, from the rear differential. I crawled under the car and noticed that the rear differential seal had a very slight leak. I checked the fluid level and noticed that is was a little more than half empty. Before I had bought this car, I had had no experience in Studebakers. I knew enough, however, that they did have something called "twin traction" and that you cannot put regular gear oil in a "TT". I had no idea how to check to see if it was a TT or not. So, logically, I figured I would ask the previous owner (who owned the car for over 7 years) if it had TT and how to recognize it. HIs words were almost verbatim:
"That Lark does not have TT, If it did, it would say so somewhere, either on the pumpkin, or usually by a badge on the rear quarters." (okay, first of all, this guy had totally replaced the rear quarters, and must have removed all tags from the pumkin, because I found nothing that would indicate TT.)So I took his word for it and filled the differential with regular gear oil.
Last week I was driving the thing down the road and the rear end began to lurch going around corners, and at slow speeds, almost like the rear end was loose. I could also hear a metal to metal "Clank" when I would shift from second to third. I thought that maybe my U joint was bad, or something in my rear end was loose. I jacked the car up to visually inspect the rear end, and found nothing out of ordinary. I then started the car and put her in gear to see that if I could see a looseness while the wheels were spinning. When I put the car in gear, the wheels were both spinning the same direction! So it has Twin Traction after all! Thanks alot previous owner.
Well I drained the pumpkin and refilled it with gear oil with Posi-trac additive. The guys at NAPA assured me that this would be okay on the differential. Well, I noticed later that it drove much smoother, but I still hear the clank between gears sometimes...not always. Did I permanently damage my Differential? Or do I need to find some Real Twin Traction gear oil? Is the Additive okay to use? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to read all of this.
She may have bugs and she may have dings, but that just proves I drive this thing!!
I bought the lark about two and a half years ago, and noticed after a few months of driving a...whine, from the rear differential. I crawled under the car and noticed that the rear differential seal had a very slight leak. I checked the fluid level and noticed that is was a little more than half empty. Before I had bought this car, I had had no experience in Studebakers. I knew enough, however, that they did have something called "twin traction" and that you cannot put regular gear oil in a "TT". I had no idea how to check to see if it was a TT or not. So, logically, I figured I would ask the previous owner (who owned the car for over 7 years) if it had TT and how to recognize it. HIs words were almost verbatim:
"That Lark does not have TT, If it did, it would say so somewhere, either on the pumpkin, or usually by a badge on the rear quarters." (okay, first of all, this guy had totally replaced the rear quarters, and must have removed all tags from the pumkin, because I found nothing that would indicate TT.)So I took his word for it and filled the differential with regular gear oil.
Last week I was driving the thing down the road and the rear end began to lurch going around corners, and at slow speeds, almost like the rear end was loose. I could also hear a metal to metal "Clank" when I would shift from second to third. I thought that maybe my U joint was bad, or something in my rear end was loose. I jacked the car up to visually inspect the rear end, and found nothing out of ordinary. I then started the car and put her in gear to see that if I could see a looseness while the wheels were spinning. When I put the car in gear, the wheels were both spinning the same direction! So it has Twin Traction after all! Thanks alot previous owner.
Well I drained the pumpkin and refilled it with gear oil with Posi-trac additive. The guys at NAPA assured me that this would be okay on the differential. Well, I noticed later that it drove much smoother, but I still hear the clank between gears sometimes...not always. Did I permanently damage my Differential? Or do I need to find some Real Twin Traction gear oil? Is the Additive okay to use? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to read all of this.
She may have bugs and she may have dings, but that just proves I drive this thing!!
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