What the hell happened?

I just went and checked on my tranny install.

He had my newly rebuilt tranny (which is the original tranny that came in the jeep...the one I broke @ Tellico) mated to the t-case and hanging on a stand and repainted black.

I was pumped.

Then he told me that he had to swap out a gear. This confused me and he showed me by looking at the old tranny.

Now read this slowly because I might not even be able to explain it.

He said that the gear (the big one that slides onto the output shaft) that was on the re-built tranny was different than the gear on the spare tranny and it wouldn't mate up to the t-case. He said that one of the gears had 18 teeth and the other had 26.


I couldn't understand why this was so since when I swapped out the original tranny to the spare tranny I simply removed the t-case from it and mounted it to the spare tranny.

Whichever gear was mounted to the spare tranny mated up to the t-case fine and that's the one I was running.

Now the original tranny would have had on it,..the same gear that came on it and the same gear that was running the t-case originally.

All I can think of is that maybe I did in fact swap out these gears but that wouldn't make sense either because I was running the same t-case with both trannies.

Can someone shed some light on this?

I almost hate to ask but I guess if he had the wrong gear on there it simply wouldn't mate up huh?

 

The t-case has not been modified at all from it's original set up. I simply pulled it from the original tranny and mounted it to the replacement tranny.

I don't remember swapping out these gears but I guess if the spare tranny came with a gear with different teeth count I'd have had to.

I guess I just reattached the other gear back to the old tranny.

 

Oh and one other thing.

He said that when he separated the t-case from the spare tranny he looked at the bearings which are behind the gear, and something was missing.

He showed me a metal thingamajig on the back of the tranny (the spare tranny which I'm replacing...the one I've been driving) that held all the ball bearings and said there was supposed to be a flat washer sandwiched between the backside of the gear and these bearings. It wasn't there at all and as a result, the thingamajig had been badly damaged from the gear spinning on it.

He said that on the newly rebuilt tranny this washer was there so I should have a drastic improvement just in that area.

 

There were the two gears, 26 and 29 tooth. The 26 tooth gear was obsolete back in the '50's.

Now, if the installer had to switch the gear to a 26 tooth and it was a 29 tooth before, the transfer case must be different or someone got into the transfer case and started swapping gears around.

The 29 / 26 tooth gear is dictated by the transfer case gear that it has to mesh with, so I'd be concerned about what transfer case I now have.

The 26 / 29 tooth issue will affect your low range gearing somewhat, with the newer transfer case low ratio being 2.46. I don't remember exactly what it was before with the 26 tooth, but I think it was 1.89 or something like that.

Also, the later model transfer cases had other differences that made them stronger.

What year and model jeep do you have?

 

John,
If I remember right, there is a spacer behind the bull gear. Could this be what he was talking about? Also, I had to get a new gear when I changed transmissions, but that was because I went from a T86 (8 spline) to a T14 (10 spline)...I think, but they were both 29 tooth. I have had plenty of dealings with tranny shops lately with my never-ending T14 install, but never ran into the "thingamajoobber" explanation yet.......