[lordfury007]

Long story cut short, (and don't laugh )

Rear drive shaft fell out while under load, Car vibrated extremely heavily for about 5 seconds before coming to a stop. Tried placing the car in 4wd and locking the front wheels in however couldnt move the transfer case gearstick. Its now stuck in 2H.

Replaced the 4 bolts with High Tensile steel bolts and spring washers and the car works fine in 2WD - same as before the incident.

The day before the car had been doing some reasonably difficult wheeling. i think the previous owner didn't put high tensile bolts in, and after having dodgy u-joints for a while the stressed bolts sheared off

My question is, is it likely to have done any major damage to the transfer case, or is it most likely just a "replace the transfer case bush" job?

[lump_a_charcoal]

Hard to say m'lord.

Replace the bush, then see how shiny the oil is when you drain it...

[mrw82]

is there any vibrations now in 2wd? if there is then the incident may have caused the transfer case to move around a bit and bent the long side arm (mounting bracket) this could mean that the transfer lever is hitting the cutout/boot where it goes through the transmission tunnel stopping you from engaging 4wd.

it's a possibility but it sounds more like its just the bush flogged out and the lever has slipped when trying to engage 4wd.

[lordfury007]

Just pulled the stick out now, the old bush looks like its in pretty good condition, however there was a fair bit of gunk (mud and crap) below the rubber transfer case boot, but it looked pretty clean below the bush.

Thought i'd change the oil, it drained a murky brown colour with some small rubbery/cork feeling grains in it - i assume thats part of an old bush, because the bush thats sitting in there (rubber washer) looks in pretty good condition. Not sure if its a vitara or sierra transfer case (engine and gearbox are vitara, diffs are sierra) and i've got a new sierra bush, seems to fit with a bit of effort, very snugly though.


BTW: no significant vibrations in the car now while its in 2WD - it drives fine just cant shift into 4WD

Putting it back together now, will let you know how it goes

[lordfury007]

OK, good news so far.

Pulled everything out, changed tcase and gearbox oil (had 4L of oil, figured i might as well change the gearbox oil while i was at it) and used a little of the new oil to flush through them before filling them up.

Put everything back together and it seems to work fine, havent actually tested it but i can move the transfer case gearstick to all 4 positions again.

The old "bush" ended up being a rubber washer and not a bush, so it didn't hold the "ball" on the stick in place, and it wasn't nearly as thick as the replacement one i put in. Not sure why it didn't fail earlier but its fixed now.

Just a couple more quick questions, After looking it up, as far as i can determine you're supposed to:
1) have 1.6L oil in the Gearbox and 1.7L oil in the Tcase - The Gearbox ended up starting to spill oil out of the filling point just before this point. The Tcase was covered over the top of the two rods that connect to the gearstick, so i emptied a little out so they're now half submerged. is this right?
2) used 80W-90 oil in both (Valvoline)

Took me about 4 hours to do all of that, being my first time and all and spending ages trying to squish the plastic bush into the slot (trying to get it over the bayonet locking tabs)

Thanks for everyone's input, will test it in the next week but i'm pretty sure it'll work.

[Ben_Sierra]

Sierra transfer case takes 0.8l of oil. I believe the gearbox takes 1.3 litres...

[lordfury007]

Thats the thing, I'm not 11% sure what model the transfer case is... The gearbox has to be a vitara one because its a vitara engine... The Sierra bushing fit in the top so i'm assuming its a sierra transfer case but i'm not sure.

[losfer]

lordfury007 wrote:

Thats the thing, I'm not 11% sure what model the transfer case is... The gearbox has to be a vitara one because its a vitara engine... The Sierra bushing fit in the top so i'm assuming its a sierra transfer case but i'm not sure.

haha at 11%
vitara gearbox and transfer are bolted together .
you would have a vitara motor , bolted to a sierra box by an adaptor plate (or dodgily modified) and a sierra transfer case

[lordfury007]

losfer wrote:

lordfury007 wrote:

Thats the thing, I'm not 11% sure what model the transfer case is... The gearbox has to be a vitara one because its a vitara engine... The Sierra bushing fit in the top so i'm assuming its a sierra transfer case but i'm not sure.

haha at 11%
vitara gearbox and transfer are bolted together .
you would have a vitara motor , bolted to a sierra box by an adaptor plate (or dodgily modified) and a sierra transfer case

haha - that was supposed to 100%... not sure what happened between my brain and the keyboard.

What you said makes sense - I have a "drive shaft" with two uni joints between the gearbox and Transfer case. Haven't looked too closely at them - how they're joined.

That being said, I have wayyy too much oil in the transfer case then, might just take the cap off for a few more seconds to take it a cm or two down.

[MART]

Open drain plug on level ground and let it drain , Cheers Paul.

[mrw82]

MART wrote:

Open drain plug on level ground and let it drain , Cheers Paul.

or an even better idea since it's fresh oil in it is to undo the filler plug, it will drain out until it's at the correct level.