djinn
NAXJA Member #820
- Location
- Warrenville
It started off as a little noise, not even related to the transfer case. Last December, while driving to Detroit for Christmas, a tic-tic-tic noise started from the right front of the Jeep. It went away when I shifted out of 4WD. "Ah ha", I says to myself, "I have a bad axle shaft u-joint". There was 10" of fresh snow on the roads, so I used 4WD only when I needed it and finished out the holidays without incident. Fast forward to spring, and moderately decent weather. I made arrangements with ChiXJeff for help replacing both axle shaft joints (I figured if one was bad, then the other one couldn't be far behind - the Jeep had 120,000 miles on the original joints). A week or two before we were going to do the work, I was pulling into a parking place and heard an almighty BANG from under the Jeep. Not a good sound. Nothing seemed to be broken, but the tic-tic-tic was back, even when I was in 2WD. Jeff and I replaced the passenger side u-joint (the joint was in bad shape), but the tic was still with me. The next week, we replaced the driver's side u-joint (this joint was in even worse shape than the passenger side) and both u-joints on the front driveshaft (they were pretty bad as well). When we disconnected the driveshaft from the front axle, we found that the shaft would spin freely no matter what gear the transfer case was in - 2WD, 4WD part-time, 4WD full-time, it made no difference. Also, while spinning the shaft, we could hear the tic-tic-tic coming from the transfer case. I got a rebuilt 242 case, added a Tom Woods SYE, and this took care of the problem. After the new case was in, Jeff and I opened up the old one to see what happened inside. (Many thanks to ChiXJeff for taking the pictures!)
First pic, doesn't look too bad from here, except for that stretched chain! :huh:
But what's this? A strange wear pattern on the chain. Let's look a little closer...
How's this for slack? No wonder it was making ugly sounds... :wow:
In this pic, you can see (upper right corner) where the chain was rubbing on the case. Also, note the sludge on the magnet (and this was AFTER I tried cleaning it up a bit!)
There was also quite a bit of play in the output shaft - see where it was dragging on the case?
When we took the case apart, not much fluid came out. Odd, since I check it several times a year, and there were no leaks (although, the last time I checked it before this was a few months ago). I have no idea where the fluid wound up. Something inside the case differential also broke, but we didn't tear it down that far to see what. There was also quite a bit of deformed plastic inside the case - maybe the shift fork pads? I was amazed that the rebuilder took this in for my core, but maybe he can do something with it.
First pic, doesn't look too bad from here, except for that stretched chain! :huh:
But what's this? A strange wear pattern on the chain. Let's look a little closer...
How's this for slack? No wonder it was making ugly sounds... :wow:
In this pic, you can see (upper right corner) where the chain was rubbing on the case. Also, note the sludge on the magnet (and this was AFTER I tried cleaning it up a bit!)
There was also quite a bit of play in the output shaft - see where it was dragging on the case?
When we took the case apart, not much fluid came out. Odd, since I check it several times a year, and there were no leaks (although, the last time I checked it before this was a few months ago). I have no idea where the fluid wound up. Something inside the case differential also broke, but we didn't tear it down that far to see what. There was also quite a bit of deformed plastic inside the case - maybe the shift fork pads? I was amazed that the rebuilder took this in for my core, but maybe he can do something with it.
