I have a 580k phase 1 with fourwheel drive. Today when I was back dragging some dirt something seemed to let go in the drivetrain. I heard a grinding noise and it stopped moving. When it would grind the rear tires would move slightly then return like something was slipping. It did it in forward and reverse and also in 2nd gear (I didn't try it in third or fourth). I see there is an inspection cover on the top of the transaxe that i'm going to get into tommorrow, but I was wondering if any one had any advice or ideas on what to look for. Any insight would be appreciated. I'm not sure how to isolate if the problem is in the fourwheel drive (transfer case) or the transaxle. I think it is important that is happens in 1st and 2nd gear since this means the problem lies in something other than those gears. I remember reading a good right up on how to remove the transaxles on these, but not really any troubleshooting. Thanks
If you can verify that the trans driveshaft is turning while the trans is grinding it's an internal failure and for all the work it is to get out just drop it. It is obvious what needs unhooked and at the age of these machines a blue wrench makes the axle mount bolts easy to remove as you will want to replace them anyway. Mel
Mel, Thanks for the response. I took off the inspecton cover today and found the ring gear missing several teeth. Looks like I will be tearing out the transaaxle. My next question is how common is this and is it something I did or didn't do correctly that could have prevented this. I searched for the parts and they seem to be readily available. I almost got the feeling from what I read that this is fairly common. Once I get it out and home is threre anything in particular to look for, common failures.
I have seen a lot over the years and it happens more in reverse, this is the reason the ring is on the other side in a forklift since your putting power that way, it does seem that the 4x4 machines have a less issue than the 2 wd in my area. It's like melben said, time to drop it out and inspect the rest of it, it's not a bad job.
I've been looking up prices for the gear set. The price for case parts is roughly $1200 dollars just for the ring and pinion. There are aftermarket parts available for around $400. I am a bit weary of buying the aftermarket gear set. Does anyone have any experience (good or bad) with the aftermarket parts. This is just a farm hoe that I dont use on a daily basis and don't make a living off of. I just bought it because I'm building a house and clearing some land. I am trying to do this as cheap as possible (who isnt ???). I also only want to do it once.
I am biased as I have worked my entire life for a Case dealer, I would pay the extra for OEM. In my area, not a overly troublesome problem, I consider that transaxle fairly troublefree. I could only speculate why this failure developed. Of course you realze they are a matched set and the whole bottom shaft is replaced as well and there are gear stack clearances and rolling torque adjustments to be made. If you do not have I would get a service manual or a CD of one. The Case manuals are very concise explaining setup with good illustrations of each step. A good set of dial calipers, and a magnetic dial indicator set to set backlash. are needed at a bare minimum. As stated, get a copy of the manual and study it. Mel
This exact thing is torn apart in my shop ... there's another thread on here but the owner never updated it as to how he made out. There are a couple things that cause this: 1 the pinion shaft bearing walked in the case and then the pinion moved away from the correct location 2 the ring gear cocked....so the angle 'tween the pinion and the ring gear moved away from precise 90....the worse the alignment the more the teeth don't share the load and the more the load is concentrated on the tip of the tooth How did the pinion shaft bearing walk? crack in gear case: loses the set on the race and the thrust pushes on the circlip and it pops off .... you get the idea. Hope this didnt happen, although I found a crack but there is a slick method to repair cast iron cracks, and it is NOT welding. How did the ring gear become other than a strict 90 degree angle? the ring gear is not held in place with big bearings like on a light duty truck or car, it is like a sandwich with those pinions....the thrust bearings are shimmed by the brake housings, once the thrust bearings are loose the sandwich can walk/climb on the bearing taper and this will allow the ring gear to angle as well as increase the clearance 'tween it and the pinion. This is how mine went, you can see the evolution of the wear pattern on the gear, if only I knew this I could have shimmed/unshimmed the brake housing....oh well. I will probably buy the aftermarket gears. I decided to change all the bearings and seals, and the ring & pinion of course, the spiders are a joke but I will reuse them and the ring gear shaft isnt bent (this is the one that holds the sandwich together) but it is also galled but I polished it.... why am I straining to re-use these parts? why the aftermarket gears? cause even if I dont change the brakes' wear pads (that's $1k), all these items add up to about $5k. Interesting the dealer quoted me a 30 day warranty and about $5 to maybe $6k, that means they must get the parts way cheaper to bury the labor or maybe they weren't going to change the bearings. Mind you, all the bearings showed wear, at 6500 hours I guess they would. You will need about two or three sheets of plywood on some sawhorses to lay all this out....want to see some pics? Yes this is depressing, but keep in mind you have a K model and seem to be able to work on this yourself. Your fellow L and M Case owners have to pull the rear axle and split it open to do a brake job, and that is about a $6k job at the local dealer. Do you have a press? FYI It comes apart with only a bearing puller / stout slide hammer. I took it apart myself using the manual and typical shop tools and some drifts (like one inch cold rolled bars that I have had for years). We were going to hire a mechanic, but he wanted dealer's field or shop labor rate to use my shop (more power to him if he can get that), and he said he was going to bring all the special tools. Well he forgot to ask me if I had the manual and read through it, had he done that he would have known that I already knew there weren't any special tools - I didn't care for his pricing and the voodoo trip so I said 'I will call you when I am ready for you'. The press will likely help get bearings on shafts etc. What is your plan to pull the unit? We used the hoe arm to lower the trans almost onto the ground (plywood), loosened the bolts for the last half inch, took away the bolts and picked up the back of the unit to allow clearance to drag out the trans...oversimplified: is this your plan too?
I'm gonna give it a shot and see how it goes. What have I got to lose at this point? I think I am going to go with the aftermarket gears also. How hard it is to remove the transaxle and tear it down will probably sway my decision. I would hate to go through all the headache and have to do it again in 3 months. My hoe came with the parts manual and the page with the main shaft and synchro has a bunch of parts highlighted and I found a receipts for the parts from 2009 so someone has been in here already. Perhaps they didn't set it up right which is the cause of my catastrophe. I won't know what bearings I need to replace until I tear into it. I can see how the cost can go through the roof in a hurry. As for the seals I'm gonna replace them all also. I've been searching for some type of seal kit for these instead of having to piece parts every one of them. I haven't had any luck. I'm curious how you sourced your bearings and seals. I have had some luck with local bearing houses in the past??? There is a website that has a reman transaxle for $5500 plus a core. I guess I have to wait until I get in there to see how much I'm gonna have into it. As for the picts I would appreciate any that you have. The old saying about a picture is worth a thousand words is true. I do have a 20 ton hydraulic press and I've read through my service manual a couple times. It doesn't seem to bad. My biggest concern is my "cheapo" dial indicator, mics, and calipers. There looking for some pretty tight tolerances on some of this stuff. Also there are a couple special tools mentioned some of which I think I can fab or improvise. The 2 piece oil seal driver and the seal alignment sleeve are the 2 I'm not sure about. I'm not really sure what there even doing with the 2 piece oil seal driver in the manual. Is it just a spacer to set how far the oil seal goes onto the axle?? My plan to remove it is the same as yours, although I may use the backhoe to walk it off the trans instead of dragging it out. How did you drag it out??? My next day off is Fri and that is when I plan to start my surgery. I'm going to try and take some picts along the way and post them to help out the next poor soul.
The local bearing house was given the job for the bearings to obtain good ones, yet perhaps save a little from the dealer.... As to the gearset, you can PM and I will send you the name of the company that I will procure the gears from. The aftermarket "rebuild" term is a concern to me since folks use the word rebuild to embellish repair work. Note: these machines turn slow, so that is one thing we have going for us. "We aint goin to Bonney-ville" are words I have heard a few times. The alignment of these gears is the key to the loading, I am pretty sure addressing this will give a long run time. Wait until you see the sandwich'd assembly on the ring gear, you will understand how this all came to be. In fact, once you get the brake discs out but before you pull the brake housings off, check the as-found endplay on the stub shafts (these are the parts that are what I call the sandwich)...mine moved so easily and had just a little endplay: made me happy, but this isn't a good idea for the ring gear to stay in place... The yard where the machine is parked is 'road based' (kind of a mixed gravel product). We put the axle on some skids so it laid flat, raise up tractor, slid along quite easily with truck/small forklift and a rope. The removal from the tractor was by far the easiest - way way easier than we imagined it to be when we feared the assignment to pull it, cleaning it and busting it open went pretty good too. The two piece contrivance, not sure what that is, but we have all kinds of scrap pipes and folks with old lathes that will turn stuff, we have an old one too but these other guys have more patience than me to square off a pipe with a shoulder....the press and these shop contrivances will put it together nicely. My advice regardless of what you do, unless you get to go to the repair shop and witness the rebuild, any claim of "rebuilt and its price" must not be permitted to be a strong point in your decision - it simply can't because we have no way of separating the good shops from the value shops until we see for ourselves. Same as in contracting ... kooks and hard competent workers all have the same name: "Contractor". A pic or two will be posted. These Case K machines are good ones and there is a lot of information and parts available. I wish I could tell you to only budget for the gears, seals, snap rings, and bearings .. and that it will be only a 1k or 2k....but when the parts total adds up to the repair estimate - how do they make their labor? or, maybe the above list of parts are not all replaced? And I had to delete off some myself where I felt I could - but worn bearings & reusing seals is too mentally difficult for me to reuse inside a transmission...
pics Here's the hoe sitting on the house mover style blocks with the trans axle out. The trans came out while the outriggers were on the blocks, then the center stack was added for safety and the hoe arm set on the grade. Here's the one plywood (a piece of white melamine) for the gears and detail stuff. All the rest of the parts takes up two more plywood on sawhorses (setup) plus there is some heavy stuff under the bench. Lots of surface area needed. If you look closely you can see the trans case hanging from the shop gantry while we try to lock stitch the crack at the pinion bearing area....
I pulled it out friday and it went suprisingly well. Only took me half an afernoon to have it loaded in my truck. I haven't had the time to tear into it yet, but I did notice that the 3rd and 4th gear have some "wiggle" on the main shaft. I looked in my manual and there are bushings installed in each gear. How much play on the shaft if any should these gears have????
There will be a 'little' movement usually, all will be revealed when you get it apart & cleaned up. The oil in the transaxle is often neglected by many owners. I have repaired some pretty ugly ones over the years. Unfortunately the contaminates in those 'really dirty' ones, did cause a lot of wear in places that cleaner ones didn't seem to have.
I tore into the gearbox over the last few days between work. The as found end play in the stub shafts (side gears) was 0.014" on both sides. I will address this when I reassemble everything. I am sure this contributed to my problem. I have at least 2 other issues. There is a crack in the housing from the bearing that holds the pinion side of the coutershaft to the oil gallery. Oceanobob you mentioned there is a slick way of repairing this crack without welding. If anyone else has any advice I'm open to suggestions. I've attached a picture of the crack I also have quite a bit of play between the ring gear carrier and the splined shaft which also contributed to my faiure. I will be purchasing new parts to repair.
You asked about the crack in the casting. From my experience, I declared welding to be simply out of the question. With this decision in my thinking, I checked all around and talked to my Dad, a smart and experienced machinist and millwright from US Steel. He spoke of tapping and threading tightly fitted capscrews (bolts) as a method to stabilize cracks. He also dissuaded me from attempting to weld this. With this concept in mind, I located a kit from Lock-n-stitch. I ordered some locks and some stitches and will stop by the shop tomorrow to let you know the sizes I procured. I also checked with some of the local cylinder head repair shops and industrial repair shops, none had the kit but they knew about it, wanted to get one, and said it was a very good 'tool'. The kit comes with all the tools/drills/taps to do the job ... fyi the locks' threads are back cut so they tend to pull the crack together whilst they lock it - trust me, this one statement doesn't begin to do the tool justice. My Dad said this was a smart step above the threaded capscrew method he has invoked - I can't have this tranny screwing up again. There was one gent who said the kit will fall out in operation and ruin the trans, but if that bearing walks around, the gig is up regardless. In my view, it is imperative the pinion shaft outer race is firmly held in the gear case. It simply can not be permitted to any meandering or wandering or spinning. That crack is damn near identical to my indication and I cant see running it like that without doing something toward stabilizing it. * You mentioned the carrier was loose on the spline? I had to press mine apart. I found little dirt or debris in the trans and have always changed the fluid annually just cause I worry about this kind of stuff.
I was a little apprehensive about the lock stitch. I checked into their website and I was impressed by some of the things they were fixing. I work in a steel mill and asked my foreman who is a longtime millwright what he thought. He said he was in a certified class years ago and they taught about using this method to repair cast iron. Both of theses things reassured me. I did notice that the bearing race did spin at some time in the journal because of scoring, but the snapring was still in place. I am interested in how your repair went ( oceanobob) and what size lock stitch supplies you used
I go by the shop with something else doing and forget to determine the sizes ... will try to focus and get this information to you.... I was seeking clarification on the carrier being loose on the spline shaft? Have you dry fit the race on the pinion shaft bearing into the casting gear case to see what the spinning is likely to keep doing? Any comments on this point?
I guess I fail to see how lock N stitch is going to help the problem, the casting obviously has spread and the cup fit will not be affected by the process, you are not pulling the casting back to size and the bearing fit will not be retightened in the case, maybe exagerated by the process, it will not bond the two pieces of cast back together. I am not knocking the process where a block is cracked as a sealing measure but fail to see an advantage in this application. As a practical matter a good cleaning and drying and high strength loctite with the cup firmly in place and I'm bettin it will last for years, the loctite will restore the fit in the bore. Mel
The intent of the Stitch is to keep the crack from widening without applying any unnecessary force to the crack zone (Stitch applies net force which tends to pull material together).
As an update to anyone who may come along and read this. I had some machining work done on the cracked housing and installed a pressfit machined sleeve to put the race in. The sleeve was dowlled and loctiited to prevent it from spinning. It is very important that the bearing is located exactly the same place because this sets your pinion depth. There is no way to adjust on these. The splined shaft that held my ring carrier was also wore out and allowed the carrier to move on the shaft quite a lot. I replaced the shaft and had a light press fit after that. I have found instances where both the carrier and the shaft had to be replaced to ensure a tight fit. Luckily mine was only the shaft because the carrier is upwards of $500. I also found that on the side without the difflock my spider gear backlash was way out of spec. I had to have the thrust washer machined to bring the side gear closer to the spider (less backlash). This changes your brake housing shim total, but mine was way off in the first place. There is a bushing in the side gear where it slides over the splined shaft that goes throught the carrier that also must be replaced. Finally the most difficult thing I came across was setting the rotating torque of the side gears where they go into the brake discs. The shims only come in three odd numberd sizes ( I can't recall the thicknesses). You not only have to maintain the proper rotating torque, but this also sets the ring and pinion backlash. It took me many frustrating hours to get this dialed in with only the 3 size shims available. The 3 problems I had: A cracked housing, A loose carrier on the splined shaft, and incorrect brake housing shimming. You will need a dial indicator, and a ft-lb and in-lb needle style torque wrench. The in-lb proved difficult to get, but I finally found that most bicycle shops either stock them or can order. I hope this helps:drinkup
This is after roughly 200 hours. Not the best pict, but you can see the wear pattern is pretty good