I have a Chevy c70 with a 5&4 and a 427. When we bought the truck at a auction it worked well... a few weeks later the aux tranny was stuck in drive. I took the top plate off the trans and there was some metal fragments in it but you cant tell where it came from....What would have broke away in there? I took a video of it.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlYyARmHL9Q
I am no expert on these, but it looks like maybe the bigger piece you show may be a bushing from the shift fork, and that it is out of alignment. The small bits may be from grinding gears, not the end of the world for the trans, but not good for it either. I would bang the rod on the stuck one until it releases, then see it there is a missing bushing that caused it to stick.
Most of those gears rotate on the shaft, so the spline teeth don't line up until you actually shift it into a gear, one collar or the other slides and locks the gear to the shaft. That's what you hear when you shift and it bumps or grinds, is the collar trying to align with those teeth. I would disconnect both shift rods, gently pry the front fork rod back and forth a bit to make sure it's found it's center. There's an interlock between those two rods so you supposedly can't get her in two gears at once, if things get worn and you don't hit the shift just right the rods can get stuck. If you persuade anything please don't beat on it, that's a good way to break the case if the interlock or detents are hung up. Voice of experience from my youth. It looks pretty good inside to me, best bet would be to either tear it down yourself if you feel confident, or take it to someone that does truck gear work, get the problem identified and fixed before it makes a problem too expensive to be worth fixing. :my2c
it was common in the day these trucks were running to get them hung up between two gears once they got worn, old timers tell story's about having to climb under trucks in all kind of weather with pry bars to un jam the linkages.
Yea its jammed good.. you cant even move the gear shifter no matter how hard you reem on it. Where do I pry? Right where the linkage goes into the tranny houseing?
If it was me, I'd take both shift forks loose first then, you can see the two square headed locating bolts. The rear shift fork will actually come off the end of the rod and rotate up and out I think. Get the collars both in the middle positions so she's in neutral, get the front fork loose so she'll slide easy on the shift rod, and then see about unjamming the rods. Sometimes you can beat on things and get lucky, I seem to do better with gentle persuasion mixed with lots of cussing.
I'm thinking the problem is that the shifter is in one gear and the transmission is actually in another or halfway between two. Disconnect the linkage at the front of the aux. Once the linkage is off the front of the aux. you should be able to easily pry that rear shift fork back into neutral. With out seeing it in person I would have to agree that that large piece is probably a bushing that the shift rails runs in. If the bushing is worn out and allowing the shift rail to wobble about even a little the interlock pin will not do it's job and worse case scenario a driver could get lucky and catch two gears at the same time in the aux. This would not be a good thing! Large parts falling on the ground This aux. looks too nice to take a chance on a major failure. From you video it looks like the shift rails can come out the front of the case once the square set screws are out. So it may be possible to do everything with box in the frame. Might be some springs and balls to keep an eye one when removing things. I may have an old manual here that may show some info if I can find it!
We used to have this happen occasionally, and the problem was not down in the transmission but rather in the shifting linkage. I have not done this for a long time, but as I remember there are two bars that come from the shifter in the cab going back to the transmission, which enter the transmission cover horizontally. When one moves the shifter say to the left and pushes forward (first or low in 4 speed brownie) it moves the right side bar back, and conversely if one moves the shifter to the right and back (usually direct, or 3rd gear) the left bar moves forward. These are designed so that if one bar is in either forward or back position, the other bar must be in the neutral (center) position. Again, if I remember correctly, there are two pins or bars that can get stuck when both of them are moved at the same time, and this is what causes the gear shifter to get stuck. To remedy this, look at where the bars enter the transmission. The bars usually attach via a clevis looking affair with a pin, which attaches to a cylindrical looking slide through the transmission cover. Take a pry bar or big screw driver and pry one against the other they will usually pop back into the neutral position without a tremendous amount of pressure. The first time this happened to me I was in a remote area. I took the top cover off of the brownie and tried to figure out the problem, and soon realized that it was not an issue down in the trans but rather in the shifting mechanism in on the cover itself. Once you successfully free it up again one time it becomes easy to repeat. It really doesn't take very much pressure with the prying tool, but trying to free it by moving the stick does not work because you cannot work the bars in opposite directions. I probably am not making much sense, but just look at where they enter the transmission cover and work them so that they are even and I think your problem will be solved. No need to remove the transmission cover.
Actually you made perfect sense. Your discription is exactly how the tranny looks like. I took a bar and stuck it in the clevis pin area and pryed one against each other... to be honest I didnt even pry I could have done it with a screw driver it was that easy... it just popped out like nothing. Went in the truck and the shifter is free and I can shift in any of the 4 gears now. I Know from now on though I will not shift that truck on the fly... I will shift whent the truck has come to a stop. Thanks oxbow and to everyone else for the Replys.
Shifting on the fly is fine, you just have to kinda pace yourself and make sure you have the brownie in neutral exactly before you go left or right with the stick to take the next gear up or down. That's where it gets out of whack, if you don't quite get the one rail into the neutral detent and you try to shift over to the other rail... the one you left pops back into gear and the rail your shifter is now connected to is prevented from moving by the lockout in the tranny. Glad you got it!
Now that you know the problem, and the cure for it, don't be afraid to shift on the fly. That is the whole point of the brownie, to split each of the main gears up into smaller bites. Carry a small pry bar or whatever you need to remedy the problem in case it happens again. In my experience, I was more likely to get hung up if I was in a hurry. When you hurry, sometimes you cut the corner on the shifter and cause what has been well described above. Make sure to square off the motion of each shift, into neutral, over, then into the next gear in a nice "H" pattern like it is printed. After a bit, you can feel it if it is going wrong, and sometimes stop it from happening, but don't force the shifter if it gets hung up. Go out and move the other rod and then start over. When I first started driving with a brownie, I had to get out several times each day, but with practice and but chewing by the boss, I got better. By the way, due to the location under the truck, my perfect fix was a piece of round stock about 3 feet long that I could poke in from under the passenger door and give a slight tap on the offending rod to push it back where it should be. That was easier than crawling under the truck to pry on it.
Glad you got it going Oilerman! And as Lantraxco and JDOFMENI have said, don't be afraid to shift while moving. It could happen while sitting still just as easy.
You must learn to shift it,there are videos and once you have mastered it you will have something to brag about the rest of your life.
Well pretty much the way I shift it is If im on hard ground... I start out in drive... shift to fourth...... then shift to overdrive... and then shift to fifth... on this truck... shifting down to drive is when it really grinds...
Auxiliaries give you extra reduction and usually the ability to split gears, that is changing gears in the axuliary will change ratios a half a gear up or down compared to shifting the main box. Your model may vary, I don't know. The normal procedure would be to start in the second gear in the auxiliary unless heavily loaded or on a hill, then start in first which is normally referred to as "deep under", second is "under" third is "Direct" and of course "Over". The joys of driving a 5 and 4 have to do with "splitting" gears, that is when upshifting half a gear you would upshift the main box one gear and then just as you begin to apply throttle again when there is slack in the drivetrain, pop the auxiliary into neutral and gently increase rpm until you can shift it into the next lower gear. Succesfully accomplishing this will give you a half gear up. Then you shift the auxiliary up again to get another half gear, rinse repeat. Downshifting is whole nother joyful process. Both of these can be done many times on a nice set of switchbacks, lol. There was a lowboy tractor I drove for a while, had a screaming 8V71 Detroit, with a 13 speed main and a 4 speed brownie. 52 forward gears, didn't climb hills any better but sure kept you busy while crawling up 'em. YMMV, just a trip down memory lane here.