The Lone Ranger – Kage’s ’94 X-Cab Leaf SAS and Bed Bob

[Kage]

Oh, there is a pilot bearing between the input shaft and mainshaft. I forgot about that one. It was giving me problems cause a few needle bearings were broken when I first pulled it apart. That might have something to do with what your having.

Going by what I see in the exploded diagrams, I think this is what is in the worst shape in the tranny right now. To bad that I've got to pull the whole dang thing apart to get to it.

After doing more reading, I'm less afraid of pulling the thing apart, but I'd still rather just slap something else in there to get it up and running quicker (this is prime wheeling time for me, so It sucks having the truck down right now). If I find a decently priced tranny in the boneyard on Saturday, I'll probably go that route. Otherwise, I'll drop the money to rebuild this dude, hopefully with a 4 banger gear set (looks like the rebuild kits are about $275 for everything).

 

[kroussinoffroad]

if you do find a donor slap it in and wheel it. rebuild yours then swap em out. sell the donor on CL

 

[Kage]

if you do find a donor slap it in and wheel it. rebuild yours then swap em out. sell the donor on CL

That's where my heads at right now. Depends on me finding a donor tranny (for a reasonable price) first though. I hope to have that answer by Saturday after I scope out the local yards a bit.

 

[kroussinoffroad]

i wish i lived closer to everyone. i have a spare and the in-law has a spare as well. i'm sure we could give one up as i should be gettings another spare shortly

 

[Kage]

i wish i lived closer to everyone....

Man I know that feeling! Thankfully RangerSVT has a 4 banger tranny that we can swap gears out to get me going again. Soo...

Anyone have a recomendation on which companies to go with for rebuild kits?

 

[RangerSVT]

Glad I could help out, now hurry up and get that kit so we can get you going :d
SVT

 

[Kage]

Glad I could help out, now hurry up and get that kit so we can get you going :d
SVT

Just as soon as you let me know what splines that slider for the tranny has

Drive safe!

 

[Kage]

Intermediate Steering Shaft Repair


There were surprisingly few articles written on how to replace the rag joints in our steering shafts, so here’s one for ya.

The intermediate on my generation of truck has two rag joints, and after several years (and miles) they’re bound to fail. When pulling the transmission out (for the third time) I noticed that the upper rag joint was in very rough shape. I did a brief search and it appears that this part is no longer being made. So your choices are junkyard, fix what you have, or custom make something. These trucks really don’t seem to be in the Junkyards around here (Plus, that dude was rusted on my column shaft something fierce), and I don’t really want to mess with the custom shaft at this point, so I opted to rebuild what I have. Especially since there isn’t any slop in the in the slip joint itself with this shaft.

The dead joint is on the RH side here, you can’t tell in the photo, but it was cracked all the way through on both sides. Surprisingly, the steering didn’t really seem to be any sloppier because of it:

Step one is to cut off the rivet heads, and pound the rivets out of the remaining pieces:

Then you pick up Dorman Part Number 31002 (you need one of these per joint), this part is often found in the Help! section of the parts store:

For each joint, you’ll need 4 – 5/16x1.5” Grade 8 bolts, 4 – Nylock nuts to go with the bolts, and 4 rubber grommets. I saw a few write-ups mention that they used ¼” bolts, but the holes in my shaft were drilled to 5/16”, so the ¼” stuff was too sloppy:

Assemble everything back together and you’re done. For a little extra security, you can put some locktite on the bolts.:

I only fixed one end right now as this still seems like a ghetto fix to me (even though that’s apparently how you’re suppose to do it) and the other rag joint is in good shape. I’ll be doing some research on U joint shafts sometime in the future as I don't like rag joints for offroad applications.

 

[Sasquatch_Ryda]

My 91 ranger has the U joint shaft in it. I'm pretty sure all 91-94 explorers have them as well.

 

[RangerSVT]

After going through the trans, we found a siezed bearing along with some shavings from another bearing. After we got it all together, the next day I pressed the bearing and sleeve apart from the gear. The bearing is siezed up, preventing the sleeve from turning inside the gear, which gave the resistance Ben felt when trying to turn the input and output shafts in neutral. Although no apparent damage was done to the gear or the sleeve, both were replaced anyways. The mainshaft bearing races had about 0.005 play on the output side, but were limited on time on finding another case. Here are a couple pics from the siezed bearing (Sorry if the pics are bad, I took them with my phone)...

Here is the gear/bearing/sleeve siezed together...

Here they are after pressing them apart...

It shouldn't be long and he will be rolling again, depending on when he finds the time to get it back in the truck
SVT

 

[Kage]

My 91 ranger has the U joint shaft in it. I'm pretty sure all 91-94 explorers have them as well.

I saw an old post you'd made that had mentioned such. Unforunately, RBV's are kinda rare in the bone yards out here. I'll keep my eyes open for one though as the rag joint setup leaves a little to be desired.

...It shouldn't be long and he will be rolling again, depending on when he finds the time to get it back in the truck
SVT

I got it all slapped back together allready (so much for taking a nap this afternoon!).

As noted in SVT's post above, I headed down to the Greater Turkey Bay area to meet up with SVT and Railman. Southern Hospitality was alive and well, which made for a nice trip down.

SVT was kind enough to tear into my goofed up tranny while I watched an learned. These manual's aren't all that complicated to tear into, but it was nice watching someone who knew what they were dig into one. It also helped that he had a few of the 'special' tools that make a job like this easier (I never once saw the 4lb seldge come out either!).

But my luck struck again seveal times. It turns out my 'master' rebuild kit seemed to be missing quite a few pieces, like replacement needle bearings and such. Which meant that we had to mix and match some parts to get a 'good' transmission. It also turned out that my case is a bit boogered up which was probably caused when my doubler setup kept trying to leave the truck without my permission

In the end though, the 4 banger gear swap was worth it. The truck is alot easier to get rolling on the street, and double low is nice and slow now so I'm happy.

Just maybe, I'll get to wheel it a few more time before it breaks on me again

Thanks again SVT!

And for those wanting a little more info on the swap, Plum Crazy did a good writeup on it:

http://www.therangerstation.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65845

It really is a pretty straight forward ordeal.

 

[RangerSVT]

Ben, I will keep an eye out for a steering shaft, hitting the junkyard tomorrow...Was great to meet you and happy to help out a fellow TRS brother. Can't wait to wheel with you at TB
SVT

 

[Kage]

... Can't wait to wheel with you at TB
SVT

I hope to make that happen this year, assuming I don't do something silly like sell it/wreck it/part it out


Now that the truck is rolling again, I got the ugly reminder of how much I'm disliking the road manners of the wheels and tires that I have on this thing. I'm fairly certain that a portion of my problem is due to the fact that the wheel/tire combo is just too dang heavy for my realitively light (and softly sprung) rear.

Right now I'm weighing in at about 140 lbs per corner with the Recentered H1's. When I had a lighter wheel and tire combo on the truck, I didn't really have the highway speed balance issues that I have currently. So I'm strongly considering ditching what I have for something else a little more streetable.

I know the nittos worked really well, but dang they're pricey and LOUD on the road. But I loved how they held the truck up when aired down (They were nearly like bias plys in that regard).

So I'm wondering what else is out there that I should be looking at (someting in 37 x R17). I keep eyeballing the new MTR's as they seem to work well under the lighter rigs out here. I wonder how much they would squat when aired down under my heavy pig?

Thoughts?

Off to do some more reading...

 

[RangerSVT]

Not sure on the mtr's, as I don't have experience with them. But I agree on the lighter rig thoughts. I know the irocks were awesome, I loved the way they handled both on and off road. They gripped everything I crawled to, and handled just as good on road when i made a few emergency calls with them. I had 37's...
SVT

 

[n_bannerman]

Svt, how did the iroks hold up to everyday use on pavement and are they radials?