Finally!!! I got to the chiropractor the week after Thanksgiving on Monday. While I was there it didn't seem to do much good and when I went out and got into my car it took 2 min to stop hurting enough to close my door and drive home. I was in bad shape.... I sat down and iced it for an hour then did nothing for the next couple of days except ice and rest and it really improved by Wed I could put my pants on without pain. I couldn't stand or sit up straight for very long and it took another week of resting w/ice to end the pain and just have a tight back.
So on Dec 13 I decided that since it wasn't going to be raining I would start taking things apart. The first thing I did was start the 109 and put it in gear to confirm diagnoses, sure enough there was grumbling coming from the box but oddly I could still go thru the gears. I removed the seats and got a call from friend Brett G. who decided to come over and help.
With Brett's help out came the floorboards, seatbase, tunnel cover, Roamerdrive, we unbolted the transfer case from the mainbox and took it in the garage(such as it is) then undid the clutch slave and the bellhousing and pulled the mainbox out to said garage.
Because Brett had recently done a couple of other gearbox repairs we dug into the main box. At first there was nothing obviously wrong other than the missing syncro spring. Nothing to explain the loud clunking noise while driving. We took the gearbox apart and laid it all out.
What we found didn't add up to the noise and lack of drive. Below you can see a damaged race for the rear layshaft bearing, in the next pic the gear is not fully seated on the layshaft.
At the end of all this work we knew it must be something else. Someone(Mark) on a forum(GnR) had suggested it was the diff, but due to the noise coming from the gearbox I had discounted his response, Sorry man. So Brett pulled out the floor jack and jacked up the right rear wheel and tried to turn it, it wouldn't budge....sigh, all that work....
Brett had to go as it was dark and he had a date, while I set about checking out my spare gearbox of unknown condition. I opend it up to find sludge inside so decided to take it apart and check it throughly, surely out of 2 boxes I could get 1 running! Well the simple answer was no. By now it was 930pm and my back was tired and starting to hurt.
I went inside and cooked dinner and sat down with ice on the back and watched a movie. The next morning I got up to find out what was wrong with that wheel, Brett and Linus were due up later(I thought to help, but not so as it turned out).
True to form I couldn't make that wheel budge either, so thinking it could have been wheel bearing or diff I removed the wheel and pulled the inner axle. The hub still would not turn! With deeper investigation I found one of the springs broken on the brake pad and once I removed the pads the hub turned. I think that because of sitting for a month and in the rain it was frozen in place.
So moving to the other side I pulled the wheel and then the inner axle, both axles showed minor wear and came out easily. Then it was on to the diff removal, dumping the oil out and with it came big chunks of metal from teeth........Mark was right.........
Once out I could see that the ring/crown gear had lost teeth, the pinion gear was damaged but intact.
I spent the afternoon disassembeling the diff and with Brett and Linus checking my spare diffs and acessing my options.
As far as the diff goes I think this is the time to go with a locker and I am checking my options, I already have a set of 24 spline axles in the batting circle.
For the mainbox I am going to replace the layshaft and rear layshaft bearing plus the 3-4 syncro, I bought a gearbox seal kit and I might hook up the reverse light.
Oh, and my back well it still hurts after all the work each day but with ice I have been able to knock the pain down to a dull roar and some siatica on my right side, hopefully I can do another chiro and get that settled this week during the rain...
If I don't make back before then, have a happy Holiday!
