Case 586e; trying to remove transmission. This forklift developed a really bad vibration as soon as you step on the gas pedal, this shuddering buzz goes through the whole machine, it is believed that the torque converter is bad, it will not even go up hills anymore. If you just let it idle it will do light loads on flat ground just fine. When the buzz/growl starts if you turn the engine off and then back on it runs fine again until you press the gas pedal again. I have the lower frame-cage off, the rear wheels drive line off, and the small drive line between the transmission and gear box disconnected, most of the wiring and other minor things have been removed. But where I am stuck at is how to get to the to torque converter bolts, everything that I have seen and read online says that it has bolts holding the torque converter to a big ring and then more bolts to hold the ring to the flywheel. But this thing has no access cover anywhere that I can find or an access hole that would allow you to get to the ring bolts to separate the ring from the engine flywheel. I took the starter out and marked the flywheel with a paint pen and rotated it with a big flat tipped screw driver and there are no bolt heads to be seen anywhere. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thank you to everyone that took the time to read this, but long story short I have come to the conclusion after watching a video of someone with a Case 580-L Front Loader (with the same engine and transmission) that the only way to make this happen is to pull the transmission off with the torque converter still attached to the flywheel. And with that... I have the rest of the things removed from the transmission and a transmission jack under it, and will resume this on Monday when I get back to work.
As I suspected there was not any way to remove the torque converter bolts first, you just have to remove all of the bell housing bolts and then slide the transmission out, it has two shafts a hollow outer shaft and a solid inner shaft that have to come all of the way out of the torque converter and then you can lower it to the ground. The transmission jack was too tall and I had to jack the back end of the forklift up six inches with a 30 ton bottle jack (which made easy work of it) and then the transmission cleared the frame and was out. From there the ring-adapter has to be unbolted and removed from the flywheel and then flipped over and the bolts removed that hold the torque converter to it, the torque converter has a rear centering pin that has to be wiggled out of the flywheel before the whole thing will come out. Long story short the hollow outer shaft has multiple damaged splines that were bashed over on one side, and the splined upper hole in the torque converter is missing several chunks of splines and the ones that are left are half smashed over as well. I believe that this is where the buzz-growl noise is coming from. It will need a new torque converter (which was suspected to begin with), and the transmission will need to be rebuilt or replaced. More later when I have something else to report.
Though that hole the converter bolts come out. Its a fun time i hope you dont have kubasa fingers
Similar to access holes on some different pieces of Clark equipment. A problem in itself of dropping the bolts when removing and having difficulty in starting on replacing. Our usual trick was to load the socket with a wad of chassis grease,. press into hole to catch the bolt. Back it out gently and Wa La... Same thing going back, load the socket with grease, press in the bolt, carefully insert and twist.... Not a biggy coming out, as you can get to them when out. It is dropping the third from last going back that is decision time.
Thanks for the replies. What ended up happening was that the transmission and torque converter were taken to a CASE dealership and the transmission was rebuilt and the torque converter were replaced, I was able to get the transmission back in today and just have the 4x4 driveline and the protection cage to put back on the bottom and then fire this thing up and see what happens. The torque converter and flex-ring had to be put on the flywheel first, and then the transmission was raised up and slid back in, to get the pump drives set correctly I mounted the torque converter vertically and set the pump keys in the transmission horizontally, once the angle was right they slid right into each other. Our 1,800 pound capacity semi transmission jack was so big that it was getting in its own way and I ended up getting a little 450 pound capacity transmission jack that worked great and was so small that it was very easy to work with. More later...
If you just let the forklift idle it will go forwards and backwards just fine with no indication at all that anything is wrong, but as soon as you press on the accelerator pedal a buzz goes through the whole machine. It originally had a buzz/growl, the growl that it had is now gone but the buzz still remains even after you let off of the accelerator pedal until you shut the engine off, after you restart the engine it idles fine until you press on the pedal again. Not sure what is causing this yet.
After some more searching what I ended up finding was that the motor mount that sits underneath what is normally the front of the engine on most cars had completely failed and was now flat and had caused the entire engine to drop and now the radiator fan is hitting the radiator shroud which is where the buzz is coming from.
Long story short the new motor mount is in and I was able to get everything important put back together, the fan is centered in the shroud now instead of sitting in the bottom trying to carve a crescent in the plastic, fired it up this afternoon and all of the buzz/growl noises are gone and it behaves like it is supposed to. I still need to put the sheet metal back on but that does it for this repair, thanks again for anyone that took the time to read this.