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Volvo 280 drive noise

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michael_cashman

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"I have just rebuilt my drive,

"I have just rebuilt my drive, and I have a bit of noise in the upper init, that I have never noticed before the rebuild, I have to put my ear up to it, or a screw driver to hear it, but it is there, and it bothers me, I know I shimmed the upper unit properly, and the gears are new, the oil is up to full, and the u joints are new as well.
I am wondering if perhaps this noise is due to the fact that I am running it in on land with muffs, other than running it under load? The noise is not to load, but ?????????? Any Ideas?"
 
Try running the boat on the wa

Try running the boat on the water and use a mechanic's stethoscope to verify that the noise is gone (or not).
 
"Michael, Not sure what the wo

"Michael, Not sure what the word "Rebuild" means to you as this can take on many meanings from one person to another.
Question: did you change any bearings or change any shim values or re-set any gear contact/pattern during the disassembly and re-assembly of the drive?

I'm going to just toss this into the mix:
Is it possible that you now have a more quiet operating drive that now allows for other sounds to be heard?
IOW's, could you now be hearing sounds that were previously being masked???

I'm a NAZI on replacement of Primary Drive Shaft bearings/seals on any of the AQ series drives!
Have you considered that this Bearing [or these two Bearings (plural as in GM V-8)] need to be replaced?
These are among the most over-looked items in this series drive, and they seldom get serviced as they should."
 
"Ricardo,
thanks for the tip

"Ricardo,
thanks for the tips, I found the forward drive gear to be bad, that was the noise I was hearing, I reshimmed after changing it, hope I did a good job!
Anyway thanks again, you were much help.
Michael"
 
"Quote: [b]".............

"Quote: "............. I found the forward drive gear to be bad, that was the noise I was hearing, I reshimmed <u><font size=""+1"">after changing it</font></u>, hope I did a good job!" ....................................... "Opps, I mean the forward gear bearing, that is!" Unquote!

Michael, I am not sure what you are calling a forward gear unless you mean the "forward-most" gear in the unit!
Or did you change one of the driven gears (of which you may be calling a FWD gear)?

Just an FYI; These transmissions (upper units) have one drive gear and two driven gears.
These three gears are manufactured in sets ......., they leave in sets of three ONLY and are installed in sets of three only!
We can't just arbitrarily swap gears around in the field and expect them to work or offer an acceptable pattern.

I think that what you may be talking about is the drive gear bearings (two tapered roller bearings back to back in the bearing box).

."
 
"The gear I had to replace was

"The gear I had to replace was located on the bottom most part of the upper unit, the bearing that the forward motion gear is pressed into, I know the gears are a match set, as I just put the new ones in a week ago, and as it turned out the bearing I had picked up at the same time, was bad, so I found another one localy, and she works like a charm now!"
 
"Ricardo:
I know the gears ar

"Ricardo:
I know the gears are matched in sets from factory, but it is in fact quite possible to replace them separately.
That however requires some knowledge in matching and shimming, and one might forget any shimming marks on the gears. Quite a time consuming procedure, but unless other gears are not damaged not a 'big deal'."
 
"The factory gets a finite num

"The factory gets a finite number of cuts from a gear cutting tool before it is either re sharpened or replaced. So I guess if you were lucky enough to have randomly gotten a hold of a gear that was from that very same factory run, and of some twenty odd years later, you'd better go to Los Vegas in a hurry.
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If you are running a LH prop, then the lower driven gear is the one that takes this load.
What I'd have done (not that I'd even do this) would have been to move the top gear to the bottom (yes, those two are the same) and re-set the gear contact pattern.
Then, with the luck necessary to win big at Vegas, I'd place that ODD gear in the top position (the position that would give you reverse with a LH prop) and set the clearances and pattern!

It's a very long shot for something like this to work when mixing hypoid gears.
I'd not do this unless I had lots of free time and just wanted to experiment!


Now, here's my confession:
People ship these to me for repair if they are not in an area where anyone does AQ series work.
Some shops just refuse to work on them now days!

A man sends me his 275 transmission. He lost the brass split ring keeper on the vertical shaft.
When the keeper went, the vertical shaft went straight up and out the top cap!
Now I've repaired several of these from the very same failure over the years, and they can normally be very ugly after this happens.
So I ended up building him a transmission with a set of good used gears that I had here.
Shipped it off to him........ he was and still is happy as a pancake. All worked out well for him.

I ended up with his three remarkably good gears and remarkably good bearings, but gear cup had been broken off during this failure. Snapped it right off flush!
Well, I kept this gear set here for years thinking that someday, just for fun..... I'd find a gear that I just may be able to match up with the other two drive and driven gears.

Years later... probably ten years......, a man sends me another transmission... this was from a later C drive (larger bearings/different gear cut). He needed an assessment of the damage he had incurred.
In his box of DP C1 parts is this lonely 270/280/early 290 driven gear.... Just one, all by itself... bearing and all!
It had inadvertently been put in the box by the shop who pulled his drive apart and handed his parts back to him.
I looked at this lonely gear and I asked him what it was doing in with his C drive parts... he didn't know and apparently the shop was not missing one.
Well, I got him fixed up..... and he got the boat running again.

One day this lonely gear spoke to me and said; "Hey..... try me with that odd gear set over there!"
Well, I had an old gear case and I had that drive gear still in the bearing box. I had a good collar, so I stuck all three into this gear case.... spun it a little bit expecting to hear an unpleasant sound...... Hmmm, Sounds OK so far.

So I went a little further by starting out with a shim pack that gets me going when you do one from scratch.
Hmmm, I'm still getting a fairly good feeling set of rolling gears.
Now I grab my dial indicator, some prussian blue and get more serious and start going through a procedure.
Now, mind you..... I'm doing this just messing around and just for fun.... I'm not really serious, but more curious than anything!

It ends up the I got not just a good pattern, but a darn good pattern with these three odd-ball gears.
It rolls nicely, pattern looks great, nice and quiet and rolls just as though these gears had been all born at the same time and place!

This transmission is still sitting on my bench, all ready to go, beautiful gear case, clean, good paint, but I just can't bring myself to sell it to anyone knowing that even while it all pencils out OK....... it just can't be right.
Someday I'll install it and see just how well it does.

There... that's my confession!"
 
"Back in the 70's I worked

"Back in the 70's I worked in a factory in Sweden, making among other things gears for Volvo Penta. The head designer of the AQ gears was a good friend of mine.
From my experience, and if the chances of making a matching set is the same as winning the jack-pot in Vegas, perhaps I should order a ticket straight away!
My guess: Your nicely put together unit will work just as good as a factory one.
That run away vertical shaft is unfortunately the most common failure on the upper units, and I've had my lot of them, and rebuilt my lot in different ways, never got them back again."
 
"Morten, I was wondering if my

"Morten, I was wondering if my long winded story would invoke some morning coffee shop discussion, or invoke some laughter.
The part that I just realized that I forgot to mention is this;
That last gear that did end up appearing to work was NOT my only attempt. I had taken other "Like" gears over the years and had given them a try..... each time was a NO GO! Even the same V/P part number.... but no go!

And BTW..... that brass split ring keeper eventually became a steel component.
This should be considered a wear part, and should be looked at when doing a re-seal or any transmission work...... especially if running the LH prop or the Duo Prop drive.

Anyway, hope you liked the story, Morten.... I liked yours.
You a Swede by chance?
I come from a line of the Lundquist family from Sweden! The name Ricardo is a nick name.... has nothing to do with my nationality.

But back to Michael Cashman's initial problem....... Michael, again, I'd much rather have seen you R & R that bearing than to substitute a gear from a different set.
This is one bearing that is so precision-ally machined, that if you were to measure a new one against an old one, they are likely within .0005" of one another. I've changed them before without having to touch the shimming.

."
 
"Not from Sweden but Norway!

"Not from Sweden but Norway!
Let me first comment on the bearing comment. The original bearings are pretty much within the tolerance You describe, but even there a trap. Try a 'hardware' bearing with same number but perhaps from different manufacturer and You might be out. We ordered (at Volvo) bearings within certain tolerances. Volvo had in my time their own 'standard', a book almost as thick as yellow pages covering the most. Take such a thing as a standard screw. In auto application a surface coating of 0,008 mm Zink, but in marine application 0,013mm as minimum! Look alike, but different part number and double the corrosion protection, and of course different part numbers. The auto part made in millions a year, the marine app perhaps 10.000! There is one of the reasons for price differences.
As for the brass ring. Most of the breakdowns in fact happened when people went into revers with too high rpm!! If running a RH, You hear a knock and a splash, then the bang when You hit the dock!
The Swedish name for the ring is 'Slit ring', which translated means 'wear ring' and it is in fact a service part! Most people that have noisy shift on an old VP takes off the top cover and measures the distance under the top nut, which of course is to big. Then they go shopping for a thicker nut not realizing that the wear is in the ring! On top of all they even often ruin the top nut as they do not realize it is a links tread!!
As for gears we never had any problems with 'matching' odd gears, but situation might be different in the US. Reason quite simple: All our drives were made in Sweden and in the same machines. In US some drives made in US, some made in Sweden. However mixing different types/design is out of the question!! by all means the sets are grinded to match in a machine and classified. That only eliminates a re-shimming after a run in period of time, which might be needed when 'mixing'. That is why I said it is a rather time consuming operation, You normally have to do the shimming at least twice!
You want to drop by my coffee shop for further discussions?"
 
"For most of his career, my la

"For most of his career, my late father was a manufacturing engineer for Wrights Aero here in NJ. His specialty was gears. In the early 60s he got laid off from Wrights and got hired by Mack Truck to totally redo their transmission gear manufacturing line. Seems that up until then, all "mid sized" (!) Mack truck transmission gear sets were sold as a matched set only. They wanted my dad to design and setup a manufacturing line that would produce gears good enough so that they didn't need to be matched. This he did...However, the manufacturing line was not a cheap one to set up. It's doeable, but only if you are willing to spend some real money to set up the line and procedures.

BTW...Waaay back my first boat came with a AQ100 drive. Apparently the cone clutch was fractured as it failed soon after I bought the boat.
We took the drive apart and my father looked at the gear set quite closely. His comment..."Pretty good for a consumer product". Anyway we got another cone clutch set and I put many many hours on that drive without a hickup."
 
"[b]OH boy.... we've reall

"OH boy.... we've really Hy-Jacked this thread, haven't we?
uhoh.gif


Yes, I know that the V/P book refers to this as a wear ring! However, since if captures a split ring, out here we tend to refer to it as a "split ring" keeper.... but I do know what you mean about expanding one when reversing as well. RH prop reversing or a LH prop with a hard shift and too high an RPM is a recipe for this to occur! Either takes it's tole on one.

Well, my point about the gears is that the cutters themselves are only good for X amount of gear making. Once re-tooled, it may not be the exact same cut, of which is my point!
Now, I've watched these being made in a video, and apparently to insure like quality and cut, the same tool cuts the gear teeth in all three gears..... is this correct with the Volvo Penta transmission gears?

If so, this is why I was suggesting that a run of gears from one cutter may very well be suited for interchanging among that run..... but outside of that run, I'd be skeptical of how well or practical it would be to mix/match them.



Robert, Helical cut truck transmission gears (that are intended to run on parallel axis) are quite different from a Hypoid cut (that run on perpendicular axis) when it comes to gear pattern setting, etc. We've been able to mix/match Helical cut gears for years."
 
"They were not matched up unti

"They were not matched up until after heat treatment as far as I remember, but take note, my RAM might have been reduced, it was 30+ years ago! At that time they started using the latest Gleason cutters.
Let us relax and see if our 'mixer' gets back with a problem, or his gear box keeps on running!
happy.gif
"
 
"Wow what a mess I have made f

"Wow what a mess I have made for you Ricardo.
I did in fact use the same shims, it turned out nice, I think you are right on this by all means, as I have thought in the past. I sure did not mean to get all these ass clowns on your bad side! some of them dont know jack bad word!!! about a volvo drive, and Im new at this, and know more that they do! my thought on this is>>>>>>>>>>> Get a book, read it well,,, preform the work well, or go piss up a rope. Hands down to Ricado E. period!!!!!!!!!!"
 
"Well, listen Michael,.... no

"Well, listen Michael,.... no one has upset me in the least here! But thanks just the same!
I think this has been a good discussion and I do hope that your odd man driven gear blends nicely with the drive gear. It may work just fine!

I've been doing this type of work since the mid 60's. Can't say that I've done it all, but I've done a little pac-ratting of info in that period of time.
Yes, my RAM is a little weak at times too! LOL

I've only been working on the Volvo's for twenty or so years. Mainly the AQ series V-8 stuff."
 
"The F@#$%^ blew apart agin. d

"The F@#$%^ blew apart agin. do you suppose it might have to do with the engine? its putting out 625 H.P. as per the dyno, cant imangine that would break a volvo 280, but maybe?
This time it blew the whole upper unit right off the drive, bolts nad all, perhaps its time to put a 290 on this boat?"
 
"Michael, I don't know if

"Michael, I don't know if you are kidding or not, but, IMO, you do not want the 290. There is not enough difference between the two for any gain!

If you wish to stay with basically the same series drive, the the large bearing transmission will serve you better.
You will need the Intermediate housing to go with it. I believe that the main suspension forks will interchange! Need to verify this before attempting to swap one. (see if the pivot tube part number is the same for either)

Or...... at least go to one of the 275/285 A transmissions. The gear case is thicker, the vertical shaft can be equipped with a steel split ring keeper.

Please tell me that you are not running a brass split ring keeper with this high horse power!!!!!!
If you are using either a LH prop or the Duo Prop, this causes the transmission to drive from the LOWER Driven gear.
This creates an "Up-Lift" of the vertical shaft placing a tremendous load on a brass split ring keeper (Volvo calls this a "Spacer Ring".)

See # 51 here:
http://www.marinepartseurope.com/PentaPictures500/7908.jpg"

(I'm a wee bit skeptical of your story.... you pulling our legs here?)"
 
"I think a better option might

"I think a better option might be the AQ750 that was once made for the THAMD 70 engines might be a better solution in this set up!
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"
 
"Morten, Doubt that he'd o

"Morten, Doubt that he'd opt for that one! I just took a peek at one..... Wow... that 750 is an odd looking drive!"
 
"It was specially 'designe

"It was specially 'designed' to use with THAMD 70 (H = horisontal).
Mainly installed in sightseeing boats in Gothenburg, Stockholm, Holland etc. where You needed a 'low' installation height. The engine was never a success, Going below 10 knots and straight was not a problem, but sharp turns the 'wrong' way oil went everywhere!! Was even tested in some military installations. A rather short live experience that I think most people in Volvo Penta would like to forget!!
However the drive at least handled the torque!!!"
 
"Well back to page one again,

"Well back to page one again, just installed a new transmition, well slightly used, less than 400 hours, so my guess is that it is fine, toreit apart, and all looked well, gears mated up well, bearing looked great, like new, yet still I hear a noise in the upper unit, I know this is not the u joints, as they are new as of today, the noise is very quite, I can only hear it via putting my head up to the drive while the engine is running, perhaps its a normal noise, made by the tranny? I just dont know, should these uppers make any noise? I have heard they are as quite as all get out!"
 
Any transmission will make a &

Any transmission will make a 'noise'. What kind of noise You are talking about we do not know unless You record it and put it on a download able audio file somewhere.
 
"The noise is not too loud, In

"The noise is not too loud, In fact standing 2 feet away from the drive while the engine is running 1500 rpms, I can not hear it, its just when I place my ear next to the drive that I hear it, I have also listened to it with a screwdriver, the noise is not so bad that I think the gears are not matched up proper, nor do I think the shimming is to blame, as I checked my work several times before putting her back together, Im just concerned about a little noise in this drive, Its not a moaning sound that is comon with bearings, and it is not a grinding sound common with gears not properly set, its just bothering me, I had never listened to this drive as much as I am now, perhaps its just normal noise that the tranny will make?"
 
"Oh, I can see it now.... we&#

"Oh, I can see it now.... we're all sitting around our computers trying to diagnose a transmission noise via a .wav file over our computer speakers!
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Michael, have you replaced the PDS bearings?

Also, w/ regard to this last transmission...... Is the slinger pump working? (occasionally the little roll pins break and the pump quits)
I know this would not be your noise while in neural, but it may explain not enough cool lube coming up from the lower unit portion of the drive."
 
"So I thought about this a bit

"So I thought about this a bit, and after running the drive, in gear, and out of gear, I noticed oil up on top of the drive, as I pulled the top cap to look for anything wrong, and the oil level is less of the top of the cap, therefore I think the pump is working.
The noise I have is while in gear, as well as not in gear, and it is without doubt in the tranny, it is not all that loud, i have to be with in a foot or so to even start to hear it, and upon putting my ear on the drive, it is clear that it is there, however, i am not so sure that maybe this is simply normal gear noise, I mean those gears have to make some noise?"
 
"If he is trying to run the ex

"If he is trying to run the exhaust from 650HP through the drive exhaust system, I think his nuts are the ones making the noise!
Firstly I guess the exhaust bellow might be a baloon, secondly the top unit will melt down rather quickly.
Or perhaps that was just what happened?"
 
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