upndair

Just thought I'd left everyone know, that the dual transfer cases are now in.

It's a funny story about how I got there. I started with a bad noise in my drive train that I thought was my transfer case. It had been leaking for about 2 years so it was the likely culprit. Anyway, after some shopping around I picked up a complete unit from www.inchwormgear.com. I chose the full 23-spline set up with 2.28 gears in the front transfer case and 4.7 gears in the rear. I've made enough mistakes going part way in the past that I wasn't going to do it again. I ordered the crossmember from them as well. You can see them at www.budbuilt.com. The install was pretty straightforward. I have to move the front shift up 1.5" and I still have to do a little bending as the transmission shifter hits the forward transfer shifter when trying to shift to reverse with the t-case when in low. I got the hole cut in the floor for the rear shifter. It'll come up right through the spare change hole in the console. I need to do a little shifter bending to make sure that it shifts without hitting anything.

Well, that didn't solve the noise. Since I had to have the drive shafts worked, they replaced 3 of the 4 U-joints and one broken flange. Put everything back in, still had the noise. The noise seemed to be worse if 4th gear so since I had a spare transmission, I put the other transmission in - still had the noise.

I finally pulled the 3rd member out of the rear and was going to swap it with the front 3rd member. When I got the rear out, the ring gear was missing a tooth and some of the teeth on the pinion were worn sharp as a knife. SO, Crash hooked with up with a good deal at Randy's and was going to stop by to pick up the 3rd member in order to do the R&P for me. When he looked at what I had, he told me that the center pin in my ARB was also broken. SO. I headed to ARB, they pulled it apart and sure enough the center pin had broken, then worked it's way out until it finally hit up against the pinion.

All this seems to have stemmed from a broken axle that I had in January. Let's add this up. New rear axle and of course might as well do the disc brake conversion while I'm at it. Cost $250 plus new bearings and seals, total about $400. Ultimate crawler set up $2100 with all adaptors, crossmembers, etc. Locker repair, R&P and install, $500. Since I had the front end apart I found that my bearings would completely packed with Tahuya mud!. Seals, bearings and brake pads for the front, another $175 bucks. While I had the console apart and was doing some rewiring, I decided to redo my air system, installing an 11 gallon air tank to replace my existing 3 small air tanks, about 30 bucks.

I don't want to even add it all up. I've been on one trip since my January axle break since I've never had things right since. I hope this weekend to get everything back together this weekend.

Thanks to Markus and Matt for their help in these many projects.

jx94148

Dual cases are truly a remarkable invention. They really show that you are serious about wheeling! Congradulations!!