A Tale of Two Transmissions

A Tale of Two Transmissions

My trans had a urd (pretty sure short shift kit installed by the previous owner. It shifted poorly (compared to other trucks I've driven, but got into all the gears - just reverse was a little finicky at times) and I thought it was because the guy didn't take care of the truck. When I went to swap the short shifter over to my new trans from a pampered truck, I noticed that the base of the short shifter didn't fit flush on the transmission housing before I felt the shifter bottom out inside of the trans. I bolted it down loosely and tried to shift and could barely even shift when compared to the stock shifter that came on the trans. When I looked inside I could see where the bottom of the shifter had been contacting the inside of the trans. It's kind of hard to see here, but there is a line in the grease where the shifter was contacting the metal below the hole for the shifter:



I checked out what my trans looked like that had had the shifter on it for awhile:



There was a definite wear issue where the shifter was grinding off the metal below the hole for the shifter.

I then checked out the two shifters side by side and saw that the bushing on the end of the short shifter did not clear the metal ball at the end and had worn away if it had ever had material below the metal ball:



It's easy to see that the oe shifter had a bushing that extended well past the end of the metal ball and was not contacting the metal in my new transmission. Not only that, but my original transmission shifted much better with the oe shifter when compared to the difficultly shifting with the short shifter. The new trans would shift perfectly with the oe shifter, but had a hard time getting into a few gears with the short shifter.

This all leads me to believe that the person who installed the short shifter didn't thread in the metal shifter extension deep enough. The previous owner had left out the original shifter base plate gasket and used rtv as recommended by URD, but I don't think that the missing gasket would account for the extra depth that the short shifter is reaching.

I tried to take it the shifter out to inspect the bushing and of course the shift level retainer cap would not let me push it down to "unscrew" the shifter (step 2 here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Toyota-Tacoma-manual-transmission-pop-out-of-gear/). I checked an the oe shifter retainer cap was easy to push down - just my luck.

Meanwhile, the new trans had been removed by a guy that was not really big on paying attention to details and I think he lost the spring that I found on my original transfer case shifter. I assume that my new one's supposed to have it as well since there's holes for it?



And finally, should the transfer shifter boot be an innie or an outie? They were both innies, but I made the new one an outie to see if it's supposed to be like that. I'm not sure how much it matters. Just want to put it back the right way.





Any knowl-age would be great! Thank you in advance

 

I'd just run the stock shifter if the short shifter is giving you that many problems. It's a truck transmission designed in the early 80's...lipstick on a pig IMO.

The tcase shifter does not need the spring, it simply holds the shifter in the 2wd/4wd fork so that you have to deliberately move it over to engage the high range/low range fork.

The boot does not matter either honestly, I think mine look like the top picture...never have even given them a second thought.

 

It looks like your correct poor install of the short shifter .

Use the Stock shifter and be done

The spring on the Transfer case lever must be a Newer thing I have never seen one

 

I'll uninstall it and keep it around just to see if I end up wanting to try it out some day. The thing I don't like about short shifters is that they make the shifter move up higher which feels like I'm driving a bus lol. I was thinking about having a machine shop cut threads into the shifter and cut off the top of it to keep the knob at stock height. I'll wait and see how big of a difference it makes driving with a stock shifter.

I wonder when the transfer cases started having those springs. I ordered another since there's holes for it to go in both shifters and I'd feel bad scavenging that one and selling the trans w/o one even if it doesn't do much.