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Trans Reassembly.... Finished and Installed.


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I got my replacement bearings and seals and put the trans back together. Seems pretty straight forward following Gloyale's excellent write up.

 

To tackle the shift fork positioning, I measured the distance to the opening from the trans case, then measured and position the shift fork to be the same distance from the center diff case's mating surface and put a hose clamp around the shift rod to keep it from dropping any lower....

 

DSC_0004.jpg

 

DSC_0003-1.jpg

 

Seemed to work well, got it the first try... or I got lucky!

 

Either way it's back together and shifting, but I am having a problem. Some of the gears don't spin well, that is, once shifted into gear, there is a tight spot in the rotation of the input shaft. Namely, 1st is fine, 2nd is tighter, and the rest of the gears are really difficult to get into and I can hardly spin the shaft by hand at all.

 

So my thought is that the gears are binding. I did pull out both shafts because I wanted to make sure I had all of the exploded bearing race out of the case. But there wasn't much difficulty getting the shafts back in.

 

So my question is, did I mess up an offset or something by pulling the pinion shaft out?

 

Is it possible that my gears/shafts had worn in some way to the trashed bearing and now that the slop from that is gone I'm feeling that wear?

 

Should I go back in, or just run it and see if it works?

 

Thanks to all those that helped!!

 

Will-

Edited by lostinthe202
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Bump for more info,

 

One thing I forgot to mention is that the drag in neutral is really bad, I can't get the main and counter shafts to spin independently by hand.

 

Again, the only synchro sandwich I removed was fifth and that gear had no problem shifting in or out or spinning the shafts.

 

The problems are that first gear is really hard to get into and once I do, it's really tough to spin the shaft and neutral doesn't appear to exist any more.

 

????

 

Thanks!

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Nobody seems particularly interested in this thread, but I'll update it anyway in case any other trans overhaul noobs feels like tackling this job.

 

I took it apart again, partly because I wasn't satisfied that I had it together correctly, and second, the tube of RTV I used must've been waaaaaaay past it's expiration date because it never dried!! I hate it when that happens.

 

Anyway, once it there, the only thing I saw amiss was that the clip around the rear main shaft bearing was not fully seated against the trans case. This did ease the rotation problem I was having. The neutral was there again too, but it was there before I popped the halves apart, so that is still kind of a mystery. I've got the halves back together and I'm picking up another gasket for the center diff tomorrow and I'll put it together again and see what it looks like then.

 

Will-

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did you make sure to align the holes bearings with the pins in the case?

 

The main shaft front bearing, and also the pinion shaft *front* bearing both have holes in them for a dowel pin that is set into the case.

 

BTW, I LOVE the trick with the hose clamp to keep the rod from *falling* too far.

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did you make sure to align the holes bearings with the pins in the case?

 

The main shaft front bearing, and also the pinion shaft *front* bearing both have holes in them for a dowel pin that is set into the case.

 

Yes and yes, after several attempts to seat them without being able to see the hole and dowel to line them up, I finally used my noggin and used a sharpie to put a dot where the hole is and they went together. I gave them a couple of taps with a dead blow fully to seat,

 

 

BTW, I LOVE the trick with the hose clamp to keep the rod from *falling* too far.

 

Right on, glad I could give something back, without your write up I would've been muuuuch more apprehensive about attempting this. Wish I had one for the civic trans I'm going to tackle after this one!!

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i just resealed my 5mt and when i put it together it was hard to spin. i lubed it up with some tranny oil(just squirted it on the gears and bearings and was still a little hard to spin. It is back in my impreza and is doing fine.:banana:

 

Yeah, I've had some toyota friends of mine say that after a rebuild a trans can be just about impossible to shift by hand without the leverage of the linkage. But I was able to shift mine to every gear while I had it on the bench before I took it apart. So that combined with the fact that it wasn't just difficult to spin, but rather that as I turned the shaft by hand it would get say 3/4 of a revolution with ease and then seize up and I wouldn't be able to complete the rotation and that seemed wrong to me.

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OK, trans update.

 

I split the halves again and cleaned off the bum rtv and replaced with a fresh tube of ultra gray. Checked everything out and squirted gear oil over all the moving parts. I did take the time to dig through the pdf of the FSM I forgot I had and found the proper torque for the bolts as well as a tightening sequence which I did not follow before. I don't know if it matters, but what the hell.

 

I made one refinement to my hose clamp method for the shift fork finger. The first time I tried to slide it on, the finger rotated without my noticing and it push one of the forks in so the next time around I used a rubber band to keep the finger in the fully "counter clockwise" position. Or said another way, kept the finger up against the splined shaft collar.

 

Here's a pic...

 

PICT0180.jpg

 

As far as I can tell, the first sign you have it right is that, after you put the 10mm bolt back in for the reverse/5th spring finger, you'll be able to compress the spring. If you don't have the shift fork finger in the right place or you moved a fork, you won't be able to get the fork finger in the right place to compress the spring.

 

I still can't shift to all positions, but the rotation is smooth, so I'm going to chalk it up to the tight tolerances of the new bearing.

 

So now when all the stars align and things quiet down at work and it stops raining long enough for me to dash out there, I'll put this bad boy back in and hopefully have my car back!!

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Got it back in the car yesterday. I gotta say that removing and installing a transmission by your self with blocks of wood and a couple of bottle jacks is not an experience I care to repeat. I did have the engine hoist to hold it up which helped a ton. but still a real PIA to not have someone on top and some one underneath.

 

No major issues with the reinstall aside from some exhaust repair and that whole heat shield debacle.

 

I finished up about 4:00pm yesterday and then wanted to take a test drive but the damn thing wouldn't start!!!! I could get a couple of rumbles but it would die immediately and then crank and crank. Plugs were dry so I thought my fuel pump took a crap from sitting for the last month. Did a dummy check of all the wires and found a junction plug that was not fully seated, clicked that in and fired right up!

 

Test drive went swimmingly except for the loud crack just as I took off, I think my rear pads were welded to the rotors from sitting. The trans is so quiet it's amazing. I can't begin to describe the relief I felt after the test drive. It was nerve racking to do all this work and not be able to tell if it was done right until it's all back together.

 

Now that the trans is quiet, there's nothing to cover up the noisy lifters!! I'll be tackling that next weekend.

 

Thanks for the help everyone, and a special shout out to Gloyale for putting that write up together!

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Just a post for encouragement and thanks for the fine write up. It's not that there's no interest out here, it's just that this is likely way past the ability of most people here on the USMB. It's certainly past what I would attempt, but I'm interested in seeing someone who's got the guts to do this.

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Thanks for the kind words Edrach!

 

This is probably the most ambitious automotive undertaking for me to date. All of my repair experience originates from need. Which is to say that, when it breaks is when I learn how to fix it if you follow me. This is by far the most ambitious of my auto repairs. I was lucky that none of the other bearings appeared to need replacing as I did not have an operational press when it can time for the reassembly of the main shaft.

 

I've got a fifty ton press at work, but a fifty ton press with a blown seal really is a zero ton press so I dug around in the scrap bin for some sleeves of the proper diameter and hammered all the parts on with a five pound sledge. You can tell by the sound when you have everything seated correctly.

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