Toro Drive Chain Chain Drive

[NRGF]

Hi,
After thirteen years or more of reading this forum and the old Toro list before, it has occurred to me that I have never heard of any one having a problem with the drive chain, chain drive. This chain does a tremendous amount of work, takes an enormous amount of strain and is only lubricated with transmission oil. I know most of the first generation Toronados were made well over specification and the chain was pre-stretched but even so after forty five or even fifty years of use and abuse you would normally expect one or two failures. I have never even seen one for sale on eBay or anywhere else. Has anyone here ever had any problems?
Neil

Toro Chain-5.jpg (51.33 KiB) Viewed 11166 times

[Eightballz]

i know a guy who's got a knocking sound coming from the chain-case. i suspect its the chain were several links may be broken.

he's gonna open up the case during february 2015

..but thats the only guy i heard of having problems with the chain

[bluecab]

I think that the chain was purposely over-engineered as Olds did not want to have any issues with it.

[Otto Skorzeny]

I agree.

Early, recurring, expensive problems could have turned a lot of people against front wheel drive. GM knew that was the way of the future and wanted to make sure they didn't do anything to sour their plans.

[xgecko]

There is absolutely no question about it. Oldsmobile engineers put more than a million miles on the test mules and beat the snot out of them for this very reason. They knew this chain had to be the last thing that would ever go on the car in order to ensure reliability, and as we now know they succeeded beyond belief.

That chain is used unmodified in the GMC motorhomes which I understand to run around 12,000 lbs Gross. I am not sure of that figure, but I know it is the same chain and trans.

I lost the transfer case in my 2001 Silverado I had back in 2010 and when the shop disassembled it to see if it was worth repairing I saw a smaller version of the exact same link belt used to transfer torque between two shafts in the transfer case. Clearly the design endures.

[Schurkey]

We're lucky.

GM testing for the Toro was done to assure the production car was built UP to a reliability standard.

GM testing for, for example, the Citation "X" body, was at least as extensive, cost far more, and seems to have been done to assure that all excess quality was REMOVED from the production vehicle.

Based on number of vehicles/market share, GM would have been financially better-off to have totally screwed the pooch on the Toro; and gotten the Citation right. Clearly the opposite happened; and eventually that sort of thinking (engineering the quality and uniqueness out of the vehicle) caused the end of multiple divisions, selling off other trademarks and intellectual property, and still resulted in the need for "too big to fail" Government handouts.

GM has great engineers, led by some of the dumbest upper managers.