Transfer case issue.

Having problems with my TC. Had it rebuilt a month ago because of a stretched chain skipping in 4 low. Now it doesn't want to go back into 4 hi unlocked. It shifts into and out of 4 low no problems. The actuator motor and the selector switch are new. With the motor removed from the case I can see it rotate to each of the 3 positions so the switch and motor are good. For those that have rebuilt their transfer case, how much force is needed to rotate from 4 hi unlock to 4 hi lock? It is about a 30 degree rotation and I can rotate mine with my fingers and that seems too easy, I would think there would be more force needed. I needed an adjustable wrench to rotate into 4 low and that needed a fair amount of force.

rascole said:

Having problems with my TC. Had it rebuilt a month ago because of a stretched chain skipping in 4 low. Now it doesn't want to go back into 4 hi unlocked. It shifts into and out of 4 low no problems. The actuator motor and the selector switch are new. With the motor removed from the case I can see it rotate to each of the 3 positions so the switch and motor are good. For those that have rebuilt their transfer case, how much force is needed to rotate from 4 hi unlock to 4 hi lock? It is about a 30 degree rotation and I can rotate mine with my fingers and that seems too easy, I would think there would be more force needed. I needed an adjustable wrench to rotate into 4 low and that needed a fair amount of force.

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Had this happen on one of our rebuilds, nothing obvious but we took it apart, put it back together and everything was fine. Really strange but something must have been misaligned.

atvspeed4 said:

Had this happen on one of our rebuilds, nothing obvious but we took it apart, put it back together and everything was fine. Really strange but something must have been misaligned.

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Have you rotated through the gears with the case on the bench? I pulled it last night and am going to bring it back to the shop this week, he is going to break it down again with no charge if he screwed up. I am curious and want to break it down myself but I don't want to open a can of worms, have never torn one down before.

They are so easy to take apart you'll be fine as long as you lift off the case half straight up. Not that many pieces to it and they stay together in assemblies that are easy to move around. The gear "selector" that you rotate has a small pin on the end around 1/8" diameter that breaks off easily if you bend it not aligning the case halves upon disassembly or reassembly. Other than that it is pretty simple. Ours felt like it was binding on the bench when we tried rotating it through modes. Sometimes this is normal and by rotating the input or front output slightly will help it but ours was something more.

I found some conflicting pictures and videos of the case rebuild. Does the spring go over the selector rod or the shift fork shaft? This thread has pictures on the spring in 2 different locations and a youtube video shows it on the shift fork shaft.
https://www.hummer4x4offroad.com/forum/showthread.php/11889-Bad-Noises-T-Case/page2
https://youtu.be/Jyfw8EWIY3I

Look at post #18 that sounds like your issue and probably what was the issue with the one we had an issue with now that I think of it we had two different people do disassembly and reassembly

Transfer case issue finally resolved.

As I sit here a sipping a Belgian Tripppel (10%) I feel comfort in finally finding and fixing the transfer case issue. I was hesitant to split open the TC but after a day of videos and online posts and liquid courage, I took the leap. After 2 months of the shop and myself struggling with it being stuck in 4 High lock, and 2 tear downs I was ready to buy a used TC just to get it back on the road, almost accepted a $800 offer on ebay for a 180k used one. After I decided to break it open it took 5 seconds to find the problem. AHHHHHH, the stupid shift fork spring was on the selector shaft, WTF!!!!!!!!!!! After I split the case to clean the surface, I noticed the planetary gears were not aligned as the manual says. An ah ha moment I said "I know what to do, I read the PDF". WTF again. Those are a PITA to get aligned. My gears only had 3 out of the 4 with marks on the top gears. But nothing I did would allow the gears to align. After an hour of head scratching, I seen that the 4[SUP]th[/SUP] gear had a mark on the bottom side, clearly a manufacturing mistake. An hour and a half of struggling to try different positions nothing worked. Then I realized that the bottom planetary gears had marks on all 4, sure as scat it worked. Everything was aligned and re-assembled. Test drove it today in all 3 ranges and works like it should. Going to Cleghorn either tomorrow or next week to flex the legs a little. Happy dance was not caught on video.

Awesome!

Glad to see you got it fixed. It's always frustrating finding issues like that after someone else that was supposed to know what they were doing worked on it.