Hello, I have a few things to say and a question for you true Gear Heads. I changed the fluids and did a tune-up on my wife's 2000 4Runner, the usual that I have done every 30k and 60k for the tune up. This time around I didn't use the torque wrench on the transfer case drain plug, I just assumed I could feel the new crush washer max out and be good. Well I didn't feel it and cracked the cover, ugh #1. I didn't want to JB weld it, so I found a used transfer case and took only the cover since the old one worked fine and has been well maintained. I removed the transfer case, installed new output seals, swapped covers and reinstalled it the next day.
Everything went together well. Too well.... I didn't take care to reinstall the manual selector in the proper opening. Sitting in the shop it worked fine (not running). The short drive in the neighborhood went well and I was feeling good! My wife took it for a drive later and the dreaded phone call came, "the transfer case shifter is stuck." She was able to get it in 2H and leave it there until she got back home. I reinstalled the shifter correctly and figured no harm but my pride. Then on the test drive, the shifter popped out of 4HIGH. Ugh#3. I reinspected shifter install and made sure there weren't any hangups, I also checked the spring/ball on the shift rods detent.
So I'm pretty sure I need to remove transfer case and pull it apart to see what is broken or out of place. Before I do that though I figured I would throw this out there to see if anyone else has suggestions. The vehicle works fine, in fact if you leave your hand on the shifter with a little pressure it will usually stay in 4h. When the shift lever gets pushed out though it feels like gears are deflecting it out of place.
So hopefully some of you can learn from my mistakes and maybe someone has experience with this and can guide me to what is likely bad or out of place.
Thanks!

 

That’s a tough one without seeing or feeling it it could be a lot of things. Most likely, one of the shafts in the gearset isn’t seated fully in the case and so it’s off by enough that the gears aren’t riding in their wear pattern anymore.

Transfer cases are pretty rugged, generally when they go it’s from too much torque/binding and you strip teeth off the gears.

 

Thanks for the reply,
I think you have confirmed what I suspected, I need to remove the transfer case again, open it up and see whats going on.

 

I haven't had this tcase apart but rebuilt a few manual transmissions, you used a different case halve with different bearing races and/or shims?, there is shims behind the races for bearings usually to take up end play to match the gear sets installed so the bearings have the proper pre-load and the gear sets don't move around putting pressure on the shift forks, to much end play or to little and the shifter will pop out of gear or pull forward and backwards under load.

 

Following up on what happened to this transfer case......
Thankfully they are bullet proof! The responses I got were spot on. When I removed the rear cover extension and the snap ring for the bearing retention, I noticed the retainer was not seated in the groove properly. This caused enough separation in the gears and hence it would jump out of 4HIGH.
Lessons learned and maybe only drink a couple beers when working on wifey's car