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Older Caterpillar tractors that had dry clutch assemblies, used drive links that were made of 1/4" -3/8" thick pieces of some sort of heavy duty fabric, stacked, clamped together, pinned and bushed on each end, so it pulled directly from the engine's main flywheel via a big pin, to the driven plate it was pinned to, that the friction plates clamped onto to transfer power to the input shaft of the transmission. Must have done the job, but in the early to mid 50's they went to a wet oil clutch set up that had a reputation for being bullet proof. It's amazing that much power and torque was transferred that way, plus with the old technology, must have needed some dampening. I had a '73 F-100 with the rag joint in the steering shaft, it started tearing them up for some reason, was not a bad truck either, but hard to say what was happening, it let loose as I pulled into work one morning and that was the last time I drove it, kind of scary, never figured out why they started to rip, something was wrong, don't think they were known for that.
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