Tooltime

I bought a rust free 4 runner cheap because it had a bad transmission. I took it out and sent it to my friends transmission shop. He found problems in the trans and rebuilt it. I got it back and installed the trans but it only worked in low gear. My friend at the trans shop said since he found a problem in the trans he never thought to bust open the transfer case.I thought it might be something electronic but not so. So I found a used trans on craiglist, it turns out he's a forum member here, his name is Jim, I forgot to ask his handle here. So do I drop my freshly rebuilt trans out and replace it with an unknown? Nope, I decided to bust into the used trans to see how tough it would be to figure out what the problem might be in my transfer case. It wasn't that tough, I pulled things out and set them on the bench in the order they came out paying attention to where the thrust washers and snap rings go. I made a diagram and proceeded to disassemble the transfer while still in my runner. It came apart easy enough and found that the planetary gear was torn up from getting hot. But putting the good components back in was a little tougher than I thought. Once I packed a drum with gears and disks I started to load them in the case and the gear would move and the disks would shift, so I would have to pull it out and start over. But after a couple of tries I got it all loaded up and didn't have any spare parts. Once it was all back together I put fluid in and started it, no noise, put it in gear OH YEAH!!!!!!
It works like a champ.

jener8tionx

You didn't remove the transfer case from the truck?

SwampThing

Should have installed some 4.7:1 crawler gears in there while you were at it.

Tooltime

Nope, it an A340H automatic trans where the transfer case and trans are one unit. The transfer loads from the rear.

Tofer

before you fixed it, you said it only worked in low, but would it work in 2 and D if you manually shifted it? i'm having similar issues with my 89.

Tooltime

No it only worked in low4. Now when it was in low4 I could drive it and the transmission would shift gears up to 3rd gear no overdrive. But when I would shift into high4 and high2 nothing, it wouldn't move. What I learned was (hard to explain) that the planetary gear spins around the outside of the main drive gear that reduces the gearing to low that is activated by the #4 solenoid. In my case that planetary gear was not disengaging allowing the main drive gear to take over. The cause was heat had turned some fluid to sludge and wouldn't allow the gears to slide. That's a crappy explanation but that's all this pea brain has got. If you want I could post some pics of what it looks like inside.