Impossible to adjust 1947 Cub clutch freeplay without splitting tractor

[Dave Downs]

I have found that it is impossible to adjust the clutch on a 1947 Cub without splitting the tractor. A little background. I maintain my neighbor’s Cub that he uses to mow his 3 acre property, it has a Woods 59 belly mount mower, and overall this tractor is totally reliable. 2 years ago he encountered shifting problems; it turned out the graphite throw-out bearing was completely destroyed. I replaced the bearing, pressure plate (adjusted the fingers) and disk. I carefully measured the offset distances from the bell housing mounting face and when I re-assembled the tractor I had a clutch pedal free-play of 1-1/4”, the book calls for 1-3/16”. I called that good and the tractor ran fine until late last summer when it developed a ‘rattling’ noise which was the throw-out bearing bouncing off the clutch fingers and the free-play was over 2”.

The 1947 Cub does not have the slotted clutch pedal for adjustment but calls for the adjustment of the yoke (clevis) on the end of the rod to be adjusted through the handhole.

Impossible!

The manual calls for first removing the pin from the clutch operating adjusting yoke. No problem so far, but then you are to loosen the lock nut behind the yoke – there is no way to reach this nut through the handhole.
The next problem is you cannot drop the yoke to turn it (if the locknut is loose enough) because the bolt that holds the bearing support halves together is in the way. You can remove this bolt but it is impossible to drop the yoke enough to turn it. And as happened to me, as you attempt to maneuver parts through the handhole the bearing support without the bolt holding both halves together will allow the throwout bearing to drop out of the support.

There is no way you can get the bearing back into the support without splitting the tractor, which I did.
When I put the bearing and support back together I again measured the offsets from the mounting surfaces and temporarily pulled the 2 halves of the tractor together and checked the free-play. It took 3 tries but I finally got the required free play at the pedal as well as at the bearing/clutch fingers.

No more rattling, nice smooth shifting.

Anybody else with an early Cub have this problem?