?Bad syncro rings / bearings=4wd problems?

[72charger]

My 96' sport(5speed, 4.0L) shifts fine in 2wd and 4lo, but when downshifting in 4high from 4th to 3rd gear, i encounter grinding. After taking it to a bunch of places, a couple of which said that i should just rebuild my transfer case ( yeah i figured they said that so after its up on thier lift they could say0-- "well the probelem is actually in your tranny, but we already rebuilt the transfer case so give us another $1000") i wont pay that. my buddy said its probably a problem with my syncros in the tranny. further networking led me to a good tranny shop, he told me the same thing, that the bearings and rings for teh syncros were proabably bad and teh tranny proabably just needed an overhaul. i just want to make sure that this sounds about right. let me know fiathful xj guys.

[old_man]

Definately a tranny problem. If it was giving you problems in all gears you could have a dragging clutch. Have you tried double clutching? Does it go away?

[Matthew Currie]

I'd concur on worn synchros, but before you do anything too expensive, you might try a refill with synthetic oil. My noisy crunchy 95 quieted down and started shifting better after that, and it's helped me put off a tranny rebuild for over a hundred thousand miles and counting. And of course if you're really cheap, double-clutching costs nothing at all.