using oil in dry clutch housing

My clutch rattles like that too but when i engage the clutch it goes away. I believe its the center clutch disc rattling when the flywheel and pressure plate are not together. I wouldnt worry about it. Unless the pilot bearing is shot in the center of the flywheel which could be a possibilty????????

My D4 dry clutch was filled with oil when I got it. Aparantly this was common at one stage, to smooth out the clutch engagement and to extend the life of the clutch plate. Good for me as the internals were all like new, but I have not filled it since the re-build.

The rattle is common and I'm surprised you can hear it above the deafening noises from the engine and everything else going on! It goes away when engaged. I think it is all the pins and bushes and levers and rods in there that are rattling, even with minimal clearances, there are so many bits and pieces making up the whole assembly, something is going to rattle.

Have you got the spring fitted from the case to the lever arm on the inside? I noticed a couple of my spares were missing the spring which had worn through and possibly been thrown away.

hi inter, yes the spring was still there,

i thought that it might be something like the plate slopping about, though it is quite a tight fit in there, and i wouldnt expect the fibre teeth to be able to cope with that sort of constant movement., and yep your right, with that many moving parts somethings bound to rattle.
i figured the oil might make things a little quieter and was trying to see if anyone had this same experience before i pump 50 or so litres into there. can always use sump oil i guess, but it just seems a tad icky.
its still audible at tickover, and medium - low revs, to me it doesnt sound right.
once its flat out the fan and exhaust pretty well take over everything else.
now that i have cleaned and straightened out the radiator fins the fan feels like it is trying to suck you thorugh the radiator fins !

has anybody used grease to lube their throwout bearing. ? to me it seems more suitable with our modern greases for a moving part like that.
open to opinions.

In relation to the oil filled bellhousing, I received comments from many Cat experts here that yes, they knew some operators did it back then, but no, it should not be done as it will make the clutch slip. I talked to the previous owner who operated the unit for 10 years and he said the clutch never slipped. He thought the oil was factory - so he topped it up from time to time. I know the clutch was replaced shortly before he bought it, and it was worn out when I pulled it - so it lasted more than 10 years. That's not too bad for what is after all a consumable part.

PS I have not put oil back in though preferring to keep things original.

I guess you could use grease - I did use grease on re-assembly because like you it seemed more logical than using oil. But after assembly, getting grease in there would be more difficult thatn simply putting oil into the dash pot fitted to the cover.

You cannot use grease in your oil cup to lube your throw out bearing. Grease won't flow down to the bearing and just hardens and screws everything up. If you have an oil cup, you'll have to lube it from now on with oil.

There is a conversion to change your oil cup to a grease zerk, but this entails plumbing a grease line to the yoke. I have one on a 7U that was a field conversion. This was standard equipment on the last of the 7U-s.

Your oil clutch conversion isn't very popular on this site. I have a friend who's done many of them without incident. 50 liters of oil would make a big mess. The problem with the dry clutch is that the operators don't pay the repair bills and my friend's clutch jobs were lasting less than three months. This upset his customers as they couldn't afford the repair bills. The solution was the oil clutch conversion which eliminated repair bills and made customers happy. This being said, most of the cats I get my hands on have original clutches in them that still have a lot of life in them so there's no reason to do a conversion.