Bizarre NP242 problem

I've been fighting the 4-low on my 242 for months now. It began as an occasional kick out of low gear on the trail thing, devolved into a wouldn't stay in low gear at all. I had a shop look at it several times, checked for bent shift forks, replaced the plastic tabs on the forks, I redid my linkage thinking the bent factory rods were contributing to the problem, even swapped out for another 242, only using the trimmed/tapped mainshaft cluster out of my old one. I finally had enough and pulled the t-case again this weekend, disassembled it, discovered a bunch of steel shavings stuck to the magnet in the case bottom. Something wasn't right here. I further figured that since the problem persisted through two t-cases that perhaps it was related to the main shaft/planetary cluster that was in both of them. I disassembled the untrimmed one out of my donor case, noticed a cluster of 50-ish needle bearings with a couple of spacer enf rings underneath the planetary race. My slip-yoke shaft, th eone that had been in both cases? Nothing but air in that same gap. Somehow the bearings/spacers had been completely chewed up over time, leading the shaft flex under low-load to cause occasional kick out progressing to full no-go in 4-low as the last of the bearings disappeared.


Anyone heard of this before? The area was wet with fluid, so it was getting lubed. Bizarre, frustrating, finally figured it out and have 4-low again. Beware if you're having 4-low kickout/no engage problems, could be hidden under the mainshaft planetary in the form of disappearing needle bearings like mine was.