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Maybe I should have replaced that bearing what I built the box...

The offending bearing (mainshaft next to the pinion gear). Also note the minor damage to the pinion gear itself:


A few scratches on the casing:



A few of the rollers, and a head of a bolt from the front diff's ring gear:



One of the rollers went through the casing COMPLETELY, blowing a hole about the size of a five cent piece. Thankfully we managed to limp to a servo where I bought some gasket goop and filled the hole in. Look carefully in the centre of the photo and you can see the black filler:



General carnage:




... And the random destruction of the 5th gear's syncro stopper:




It was well dark by the time I had the box open and could investigate, so no thorough conclusion can be drawn yet as to the cause of failure. I still need to sift through the drained oil to see what else is broken, and check everything carefully. The preload and backlash were correctly adjusted, so for now my suspicion is that a piece of debris has lodged itself into the bearing which gave out in spectacular fashion. Lucky to get it home!

Sigh, and I thought I finally had my car back...

Owen.

very impressive! Shame though, stuff like this can be really demorilising if u've spent a lot of time and effort on the car.
I remember smashing a piston on my old car 3 weeks after completely rebuilding the engine, i almost cried and very nearly gave up on modified cars altogether.

wow
I'm so sorry for your loss - so when's the rebuild

Ouch Owen.. looks like it's time to find another box.. that box is toast

FROG wrote: wow
I'm so sorry for your loss - so when's the rebuild

Next week

tmh983 wrote:very impressive! Shame though, stuff like this can be really demorilising if u've spent a lot of time and effort on the car.
I remember smashing a piston on my old car 3 weeks after completely rebuilding the engine, i almost cried and very nearly gave up on modified cars altogether.

That's very much how I felt! For the places I go I considered buying a bigger 4wd, until I started driving them regularly for work and realised that were not that much better than my subi and felt terrible on road. And I would go back to a stock gearbox, if this one didn't feel so damn good!

RSR 555 wrote:Ouch Owen.. looks like it's time to find another box.. that box is toast

Wait until you see the photos of the hole! I have to dig the gasket goop out first, but it's mighty impressive! Looks even better in the flesh. There aren't any gen 2s at the wreckers atm, so I've made an adapter plate to fit my hydraulic clutch onto the gen 1 box (cable clutch originally). Fab'd and painted the adapter today, tapped the new thread on the gen 1 case and it fits nice and securely. It's a bit rough, but it took ages to grind into shape so I can't be bothered making version 2! . Also need to change the speedo drive gear and sensor (cable v electric), otherwise, that should be it!

Then I've got to get myself a new bearing, get the input shaft bearing I replaced pressed off (had to change the bearing to fit the gen2 input shaft holder's diameter) and changed to the original (but new!) bearing, new bearing for the mainshaft, and any other bearings I can find and replace! There will be no old bearings left once I'm done

I've got monday and tuesday to work on it, that should be enough... we'll see!

Ouch man:( What a bastard of a thing to occur. I will take note of all this for future reference so HOPEFULLY dont experience this myself.

J

It must be the day for it this arvo i had an outer CV shelf distract! It axed the cage, and inner race! No balls to be found and the CV boot was still good! Subaru Goods must be on the war path!

ScubyRoo wrote:Wait until you see the photos of the hole! I have to dig the gasket goop out first, but it's mighty impressive! Looks even better in the flesh.

I've got monday and tuesday to work on it, that should be enough... we'll see!

Cool (well not for you) would be good to see those pics. Have you worked out what it was? I'm thinking that the locating pin and locating hole (on the diff pinion shaft) wasn't lined up correctly I'm wondering if this caused the casing to twist and make it hard to select gears

Have good luck on getting the car running, I'm sure you'll get it sorted

Shiiiiiit, carnage. Very impressive though. Must be tough to find the motivation to get back to work on the car after losing all that time and effort put into the box.

On a selfish note post up some pics of your hydralic/cable operated clutch adapter. I need to sort this out soon and wasn't looking forward to putting the Gen1 pedal box in the gen2 and running a cable from that. Adapter could be easier.

Good luck with the repairs!

Venom wrote:Shiiiiiit, carnage. Very impressive though. Must be tough to find the motivation to get back to work on the car after losing all that time and effort put into the box.

On a selfish note post up some pics of your hydralic/cable operated clutch adapter. I need to sort this out soon and wasn't looking forward to putting the Gen1 pedal box in the gen2 and running a cable from that. Adapter could be easier.

Good luck with the repairs!

Essentially the adapter is a piece of steel plate about 30mm thick, ground into shape to fit over the contours in the housing. It has two 10mm wide holes, one that fits into an existing 10x1.25 hole, and another that goes into a hole that needs to be tapped (on an angle!) into the casing. If you come over to my joint with some 100mm grinding and cutting disks and your casing I can show how to do it yourself. I'll keep the extra steel I used as a drill template. I should have enough 30mm block kicking around for you to use...

If my MIG has arrived by then we could even fab something out of alu and it'd look factory .

I'm not sure why you need an adapter for the clutch? I converted a Gen1 gearbox to hydraulic and a SF Forrie box to cable just by swapping parts over. There are two places in the housing for the clutch fork pivot ball (one for cable, the other for hydraulic), the top of the bellhousing was drilled for the slave cylinder, and the forrie pedal box bolted straight into the Lib. Even the hard lines clipped into place.

Is the Gen2 Lib that different?

Point wrote:I'm not sure why you need an adapter for the clutch? I converted a Gen1 gearbox to hydraulic and a SF Forrie box to cable just by swapping parts over. There are two places in the housing for the clutch fork pivot ball (one for cable, the other for hydraulic), the top of the bellhousing was drilled for the slave cylinder, and the forrie pedal box bolted straight into the Lib. Even the hard lines clipped into place.

Is the Gen2 Lib that different?

Well thats easy. Like Owen i'm putting a cable operated box into a hydraulic gen2. I've got no idea what i'm doing though

So can't you just get the pedal and brackets from a cable clutch Gen1 lib and bolt it all in?

As I've said to you earlier mate - BUGGER!!!

Hope you get it back to the spec you're after - with everything intact...

All the best

Bennie

Thanks all for your comments - they've helped me keep my motivation up!

Point wrote:...the top of the bellhousing was drilled for the slave cylinder...

Mine is not, thus need for an adapter for the slave cylinder - I might not have made that clear. It only has one hole, so I've made a bracket that allows for the slave to attach to the pre-existing hole, and also have a platform to sit on so it marries nicely into the second hole I drilled/tapped.

If it had the two holes needed then I wouldn't need to do much else. As the car is already hydraulic operated, I don't need to worry about the pedal box etc, although I will need to check what you mentioned about the ball pivot as I hadn't thought of that - thanks!

I'll try and gets some pics up soon to make all clear.

Thanks again everyone!

Owen.

A few more pics of the damage...


The gasket goop 'plug':



Damage on the front diff. Notice the missing bolt head?



Comparative size difference of an undamaged vs damaged pinion gear:


I've already found another 4.11 pinion shaft. It's being sent from NSW this afternoon, so hopefully I'll get it tomorrow morning. I'm working sporadically these next few days, so hopefully I'll get it done by saturday. Fingers crossed!

Best of luck mate! Sounds good that your going with the 4.11 again. It would be painful to have to pull the box again to change the ratio back!

Cheers

Bennie