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

[86 slo-vo]

Cleared it out, tapatalk doesn't tell me when it's full.

 

[Kage]

Well I’m getting pretty dang good at pulling the tranny out of this truck. Even with my ‘zoning out’ time of laying under the truck just staring at stuff, I got it out in under an hour.

I isolated the issue pretty quickly when I pulled the drain plug on the tranny and found this:

My second clue that the tranny may have problems was the rattling sounds it made as I moved it around on the floor . When I pulled the top plate off the transmission I found that third and fourth gear had left the building. Taking out the counter shaft and most of the other gears at the same time:

Tomorrow I’ll hit the junk yards to see if I can find another one. While I haven’t read of too many M5oD failures, I’m not really getting a warm and fuzzy feeling from them anymore. I don't know what Ford rated them at, but I do know that I'm sitting right at 2k over what the GVWR is on this truck (door sticker) so I'm not sure if that reall matters or not. Unfortunately my options for transmissions kind of sucks unless I do a repower, and I really don’t have the motivation for that.

If someone has a known good 4.0, 4x4, M5oD laying around, I’d sure like to hear from ya in case I don’t find one at the yards.

Surely there’s an end to this bad luck… right?

 

[wahlstrom1]

Dude, wtf? I drug around 10k lb skid steers on trailers, diesel front mount mowers and other trucks on car haulers, and full yards of gravel in the bed when I was on 35's.... Never shelled a tranny!

The bad luck has to run out soon.....

 

[Kage]

Dude, wtf? I drug around 10k lb skid steers on trailers, diesel front mount mowers and other trucks on car haulers, and full yards of gravel in the bed when I was on 35's.... Never shelled a tranny!

The bad luck has to run out soon.....

Yup, I guess I'm just lucky! I can also assure you that I drive like a grandma in this truck. No speed shifting/side stepping the clutch or anything of that nature. And I can also assure you that my 228k mile 4.0 Power house isn't putthin out that much juice either Just pure bad luck at play it seems.

I've been poking around here for awhile and I don't really see many reports of M50D failures, save for the ones that were run without fluid. So that makes me feel a little better.

I am kind of bummed that I didn't get to play with the lower 4 banger gears off road before they died

 

[MrE_Powers]

i wonder if you can slip the guts from a m50dhd in to a m50d?

 

[4.0B2]

man that tranny looks good!!! lol

 

[86 slo-vo]

Something is up, I dumped the clutch in my ranger in 1st through 3rd so many times it wasn't funny. Speed shifting,no clutch while shifting just plain abuse and the only problem I ever had was loose shifter bushings.

I don't think the failure was the tranny's fault.

 

[RangerSVT]

There was some play in the countershaft's bearings race retainers(the case where the races reside). If I had to guess the races spun, making more play and causing less and less if the teeth to make contact. Since 3rd-5th gears have the most torque applied to them (torque vs gear ratio) I'd say that's what did the trans in...Ben, the tailhousing is still good, save that part if you scrap the trans. I'll look and see if that trans is still in the jy near me...

SVT

 

[Kage]

i wonder if you can slip the guts from a m50dhd in to a m50d?

Yes you can, however this Transmission Case was questionable when we put it back together as there were a few spots where the races had spun and ate the case up. Enough to raise an eybrow, but not enough to not justify reusing the case. At this point, I don't trust this case at all (or main shafts for that matter).

man that tranny looks good!!! lol

Something is up, I dumped the clutch in my ranger in 1st through 3rd so many times it wasn't funny. Speed shifting,no clutch while shifting just plain abuse and the only problem I ever had was loose shifter bushings.

I don't think the failure was the tranny's fault.

That's good to hear. I did a lot of internet looking last night and there are very few failures for these transmissions other than running them without fluid. If I get the gumption later, I'll pull the tail housing off and take a look at things back there to see something else had gone wrong.

... making more play and causing less and less if the teeth to make contact...

That would make some sense as 3/4th reside where where the main shaft meets the input shaft. So any play in the system would be magnified in that spot, which happens to be where it failed. I'll hold onto the tail housing if its not trashed, and assuming they don't want it back with the core.

Waiting for day light to break, then I'm off to the yards!

 

[RangerSVT]

If you can and its not more $$, get one from an 01 or newer ( those will have the r1-hd design) ...

SVT

 

[Kage]

Well no dice at the Junk yards. Plenty of 2.3 2wd 5 gears running around, but zero 4.0's. Thankfully it looks like SVT knows where a few live down in the TN area so I'm not completely dead in the water, and it looks like a quick road trip will be in order next weekend. Thanks Rick!

 

[RangerSVT]

Glad I could help, again! Got to have better luck this time!

SVT

 

[Bennybooster]

There is a guy selling a np435/205 combo with the 4.0 adapter in the classifieds...

 

[Kage]

There is a guy selling a np435/205 combo with the 4.0 adapter in the classifieds...

Yeah I've eyeballed that a few times now, but I"m holding back. I don't really want to lose the crawl ratio I have right now, from what I read, it looks like getting that combo might be a pain in the butt to get to work with the stock clutch stuff (mostly worried about the MC portion of it).

Right now I want the truck running sooner than later, so I'll keep the 435 on the back burner. Thanks for the heads up though!

 

[MrE_Powers]

a quick search... http://car-part.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?userSearch=int&userPID=1000&userLocation=All+States&userIMS=&userInterchange=%40ACEN&userSide=&userDate=1996&userDate2=1996&dbModel=27.28.1.1&userModel=Ford%20Ranger&dbPart=400.1&userPart=Transmission&sessionID=200000000000000000466960534&userPreference=zip&userZip=62269&userLat=38.6074&userLong=-89.8929&userIntSelect=884867&userUID=0&userBroker=&userPage=1&iKey=

desoto auto part inc has a rebuilt 4.0 m5od 4x4 for 900$......
hillsdale auto parts has a few all for 600
parts x press says they have one for 550