67King

I've got a few transmissions laying around here. I've got an S2 LSD one partially torn apart. Goal for that is to swap a 5th gear from a 5R, add oil cooler from the same 5R, and put in my track car. But before I put a used transmission in the track car, I want to be sure it is robust. I'll put the 5R in my street car sans oil cooler (unless I can adapt the one from my open diff trans with the oil cooler, anyway) and with the S2 5th for better highway cruising.

So far, all of the bearings and races look good. But I've not pulled the main gearset out of the case, yet, only pulled off the front and rear case sections. So I am limited to looking at the ball bearing on the end of the input shaft, the front two needle/roller bearings that are pressed into the front case on the input shaft, and the pinion bearing. I'm trying to avoid doing anything that would adjust my R&P lash if I can avoid it, as well.

I've gotten one opinion from a guy I know and trust who said to just replace the synchros on the trans part, and if the LSD's breakaway torque is in spec, don't mess with it. Does anyone else have any experience that would indicate otherwise? Car will be an SP3 car, so the engine will be pretty close to stock Turbo S configuration.

Again, are there any known failure modes other than synchros that go bad?

Chris White

Always take a good look at the ring gear.

Oddjob

If you swap the side plates (for the oil cooler), you will need to at least check the r/p setup because it holds one of the shimmed diff. bearings. Not a great idea to mix and match bearing races when swaping the side plates, but why knock out and reinstall/reshim a used bearing race? So might want to consider either putting in new diff bearings and having the r/p setup (and if you do that, might as well do the pinion bearings too...), or just skip the oil cooler altogether.

Certainly bearings wear out. The pinion bearing whine is common, and the input shaft ball bearing "marble" rattle is also common. As Chris mentions, look for fine pitting or noticeable graying on ring gear and pinion teeth. Should just look bright polished. If the front pinion bearing race and rollers look ok (no graying or pitting on the surfaces), the rest of the trans bearings could all be in pretty good shape. That bearing takes the most load and probably will show wear first/early.

67King

Thanks for teh replies. Didn't realize the side plate held one of the races, though I should have (haven't pulled the diff out yet). Crap. Job just got harder/more time consuming.

Tedro951

LOL! My resto was/still is fueled by that exact phrase!

67King

Ring gear looks very different than anything I've seen before. Admittedly, it hasn't been many, but it is just different. I'm also not used to ring gears being failure prone.

Anyway, the center of the gears look good. The edges look very strange. No pitting or chaffing. You cannot feel any of this. But there are streaks. Perhaps it is because it is at the trailing edge of where the pinion engages it.

But before I go spend several hundred bucks on various other bearings, can y'all give me some thoughts on this?

67King

Bump. Chris, Jim, any thoughts on how much life I'll get out of the ring gear? Like I had said, I've never seen one look like this (but I've never messed with a transaxle before, either!). I'll just run it as is until it goes boom if it is on its last leg. I'm hoping it isn't, in which case, I'll put some money into bearings and synchros. Breakaway torque is right at 20 n-m, so I'll leave the diff alone.

Oddjob

Hard to say, seems like the lines are unusual from what I can see in your pics.

I will take a look at the loose ring gears I have and see if there is any indication of similar marks. I dont recall any. Old pic of an S2 and turbo ring gear, but hard to see anything from this.