I have a 82 toyota truck (4WD). Yesterday I left work and went to put it in 1st and it started grinding a chugging put the clutch in and it stopped. Does this in 2nd,3rd & 5th. The only gear I can drive in is 4th. Any ideas on what this might be?

Thanks
Bryon

 

I'm betting input shaft bearing. Your transmission is the L50, which has an undersized input shaft bearing that's prone to failure. Ask me how I know!

Anyway, I went thru this in '87, and again in '92, so I'm betting your truck doesn't have oversized tires, or has fairly low mileage for this to take so long to rear its ugly head. The trans should either be swapped for an L52 ('83), or rebuilt and have the case milled for the larger L52 input shaft bearing.

Marlin Crawler does a really great job with these; Marlin specializes in Toyota truck transmissions and transfer cases.

 

I'm guessing you know more about this than me....but I think all the L's, including the 52, had the same input shaft bearing problem. This is why Marlin Crawler's L52HD results from them boring the transmission to allow a larger bearing. Worth checking into a bit closer....
By the way, anybody have Moses Ludels "Toyota owners bible" or something like that? He goes into that. He specifically doesn't include '82 & '83 1st gen trucks or whichever had the 5speed in his "best value used toyota pickup buys", I think specifically for this reason, and talks about the problem being the 5th gear that's putting the excess load on the bearing.....he does recommend the '79 & 80, possibly '81 but I can't remember....then with the '84s they addressed the problem. I'm just repeating what I've read & heard though.....no real personal experience. My 5speed L52 was total total toast at 166,000....but that's not too terrible and who knows how the PO treated it.

 

I'm sorry I ment to type in 83. It's a 83 Toy. Could this still be the problem

 

It could still be the problem. Are you running big tires, stock gears, and using 5th gear a lot?

 

the guy I bought it from was running 33 x 12.5's and stock gears on it. Running stock tires now.