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View Full Version : tranny quit on me need to source problem, fix quickly myself



airbornrover
01-06-2009, 05:01 PM
Warning my terminology sucks, glaced/read green bible two times already.
The serial number on the tranny was slightly worn off, upside down towards the bottom on the rightside of the tranny housing and is 576863CA or 576653CA.

1st. when started on highway engaged roverdrive when in 4th gear there was a slight grinding noise coming from the tranny area. so in the intrest of making it in time for xmas i left it alone and continued driving north on I95 from north carolina to jersey.

2nd. after hitting one to many bumps my gearshift pops out of gear while on an incline driving on the highway. so i quickly try to place it in gear getting no power to the wheels and a grinding sound when i release the clutch. It was nightfall and the temp dropping/windchill. Also didnt have the front propshaft connected from doing some earlier work on one of the hubs. So, i was not able to see if i could depress the yellow knob and get power to the front wheels.

3rd. Taken the transmission out of the truck and sitting up on a table right now. took off top cover of tranny, both covers on transfer, and drained the oil out of the tranny. the oil was in pretty good shape with two different halves of two sychro springs in the drain plug when draining the oil out. then pulled off the roverdrive and seeing that i really did burn out the roverdrive with a reddish powder-like residue in some of the parts that connect to the rear shaft of the tranny. Rotating the ebrake drum/ shaft coming out the bell housing heard a grinding. With removing the overdrive the grinding noise ceased. Drained the oil from the transfer case as well with the obivious smell of burnt oil. Kept rotating around the gears to hear for any more noise or the like. During this i ordered various parts for things that popped out at me; sychro springs, rear oil seal, clutch plate and such. While i was rotating the shaft in the bellhousing, i found that i could slide the shaft back and forth and up and down and the same with a little less up and down motion with the rear shaft coming out of the tranny. So i removed the front main pinion cover within the bell housing and found that the bolt that goes in the lower shaft was completely loose with the head of the bolt wearing away a smooth circle when it was pressed against the inside of the cover also decent sized groove into the threaded part of the bolt.

Has anyone come across this? The play i found in the front and rear shafts sticking out from the tranny are the results from this single bolt rotating loose?? Can i just replace the bolt and tighten it to spec to cure the slop? Do i really have to replace all the bearings cause of this? Wear and tear over time is more the culprit then just the loose bolt and replacing all or just the two bearings on the front and rear shaft cure this??

Update:
Thanks to Les at roversnorth i was able to find a replacement bolt at napa to bolt back into the layshaft. which tightened up things quite a bit, as im now not able move the main shaft as much back and forth, but still able to move it up and down but less so. Which is still more then it should. The shaft coming out the rear of the tranny is not moving back and forth at all anymore.

According to 37.12.07 in the good book for taking off the bell housing it doesnt seem like that when im pulling the bell housing away from the tranny housing that the layshaft and the entire mainshaft should come with it. Since this is my first time doing something like this and cannot find anything similiar happening to others when they wrote up their experiences with S3 trannys.

I am hoping that someone would have some insight??