Tranny/tcase rebuild problems

Recall that I swapped in a t18/d20. Well I finally got a chance to take the Jeep for a real spin and there appears to be a problem. I will do my best to explain. It goes into all gears fine and the clutch works great. When pulling to a stop and stepping on the clutch from about 10mph it clunks like it is trying to get into another gear. Does not matter if its in secind or in neutral. At a stop it sounds fine, no clunking at all. Pull away and its sounds great. Step on the clutch to go into second and it clunks lightly. At about 15mph and up it clunks loudly with the clutch depressed. If I ride the clutch from about 20mph and coast to a stop it clunks very loudly and the Jeep surges a little.

The clunking sounds like a gear is trying to engage. When I try to push a little on the synchros (foot off the clutch) it gets worse with second gear while coasting at about 10mph.

I rebuilt the tranny and tcase. I dont recall anything strange, broken, out of place, or burnt up except: reverse had no thrust washer or bearings and there was no room for bearings, I remember feeling uncomfortable with the fact that the tranny mount bolts had to be used to get the tranny to seat on the bellhousing. At the time it didnt bother me too much cause the tranny weighs about 150lbs and it might have been a slight misalignment issue.

So any ideas?

Karl

 

So,... where is the clunk coming from? I would recommend using an engine stethospcope and finding that out.

Do you feel the clunk through the clutch pedal, or is it only a sound?

There is a whole world of troubleshooting to do. Limiting it to one component would help...

 

the fact that you got a t-18 from a fsj to fit in a cj-5 with out changing the input shaft still has me confused. maybe by using the trany bolts to suck it in there is now some/a lot of presure on the input shaft causing syncros or something to not work right.

 

Clunking may not be the right word. The noise sounds like when a gear is skipping along another trying to mesh. I am quite sure its coming from the tranny. I can make it louder using the gear shift to push into second foot off the clutch and coasting. You are right though, it could be something else like the tcase. I am not comfortable with how the tcase shifter holds 2wd. I will investigate using a mechanics steth to pin the noise to one component.

It turns out that in some cases the fsjs and cjs share the same bell, adapter,tranny, adapter set up on the t18. I came to this conclusion from reading Novaks website, my parts manual, and close examination of 53flatties pics and driveshaft discussion. He and I had the same rear dshaft lengths too. The problem with a fsj setup is the tcase. A fsj tcase has a different front bearing retainer/interlock set up. Its not compatible with the cj tcase shifter, just ask Danstew.

BTW, thanks for the input guys.