t18 testing

Ok, I managed to get a bit of testing done to isolate my t18 swap problems. I put the rear up on jackstands and made sure the front diff was free. I used a stick to disengage the clutch, put the tranny in 1rst and the tcase in 4lo and crawled underneath to spin the dshaft by hand. My goal here was to see if the pilot bearing was binding at all. I figured that with everything in lo resistance due to the pilot would be maximized. Everything moved nicely.

Then I started it up and ran through the gears. Here is what I found. With the tcase in neutral there is no "clunking" and I can hit every gear (1 through 4) at any rpm and have no wierd sounds. With the tranny in any gear and the tcase engaged in any range (4hi,4lo,2) the noise appears. The noise is at its max when in 2wd and 4rth. This leads me to suspect the tcase. This may be a statement of the obvious, but sometimes the obvious is not so to me.

When I rebuilt the tcase i replaced all the bearings accept the intermediate shaft and needle bearings 'cause they looked ok. There was no tracking, no gouging or wear on the shaft, and the needle bearings looked fine.

Plan of attack: I have my original tcase so I will install it and see what happens.

Is anything popping out to you guys here? Could it be something else? I ask because I am trying to avoid taking out the tranny - its heavy.

Karl

 

the only suggestion I can make would be to drop the pan on the t/case and look inside for debris and/or missing teeth
you could also run it in low range this way for a short time and watch the gears
you could also just swap out the t/case as you indicated

 

The d20 tcase uses shims for endplay too. I measured the end play and tried to get to .001" as suggested in the tsm. I was never fully satisfied with the final product though.

Thanks for the input

karl

 

That seems kinda tight. Are you sure it's not .008 - .010 on the endplay?