I'm pulling my tranny and I've pulled the rubber boots and plastic off from around the shifters. At the bottom of the main shifter is another rubber boot with four Torx screws underneath. Down a little farther are four 1/4" hex screws that seem to hold the whole top part on the top of the tranny. Which ones do I take out? Thanks ahead of time, and I'll be sittin' here waiting for your reply.

 

Not real sure on the 4500, sorry. As a general rule of thumb, do what it takes to get the shift lever off and you should have the room you need. Hopefully someone w/a 4500 will see this.
greg

 

yeah...hope so!

 

The shift lever can be removed by pressing down on the ball collar with 2 short handled screw drivers or punches, press down and twist it counter clockwise 1/8 turn. You can take out the 4 bolts and remove the entire tower assembly as well in neutral. To remove the fork assembly you will have to slide the trans into reverse part way to get the forks to slide up past the case. Best I can remember it has been a while and I like it that way. PK

 

Hey, thanks PK! Much appreciated!

 

Tell us about the pilot bearing that wrecked the input shaft on your NV4500 in your gallery.

Was it a sleeve bearing or roller bearing ?

I couldn't decide what bearing to use when I put the Cummins in my truck, so I used a kevlar bearing.

Any comments ?

 

It was the stock needle bearing. If I had known about the replacement ball bearings (Kevlar and so on) at the time, I would have had my mechanic use them; it would have saved me pulling this apart in my son's driveway 5,000 miles from home! A friend of mine back home, who has a shop, says that if there is enough wobble induced into the front of the input shaft from a needle bearing failure, that that will cause the fifth gear retaining nut to come loose. That makes some sense, since the clutch symptoms started on Saturday, and fifth gear went on Sunday. Hope this helps!

 

More importantly the wobble in your input shaft can cause it to shear off under load usually 3rd gear as you are pulling. The 5th gear problem is unrelated and is caused by poor design as it is outside the cast case demanding the only restraint on that gear is the nut. Unlike the other gears in the main case which if a bearing or preload backs off and comes loose is restrained by the case. We have torqued these nuts to way past the spec and still come loose but the completely splined shaft stops it from walking back and disengaging the other gears when loose. The split nut will only take so much torque and then it spreads, stupid system. Stock needle pilot bearings are installed with adequate standard grease and are subjected to heat off the crank and engine and quickly dissipates, they need HD synthetic greases. Machining the flywheel and installing the bigger roller/ball bearings sets the unit up more like a big truck and handles the torque much better. We usually wash out the throwout bearing and fill it with HD synthetic bearing grease as well. the 1st gen Getrags were famous for the input shaft shearing off for the same reason. PK

 

That's right, PK. I wish I had known about Quad 4X4's updated shaft, nut, and retaining system a couple of years ago; I would have had it redone then and saved a lot of headaches. I found a good gear guy down here that is rebuilding the tranny with an updated shaft and retainer system, but it isn't as good as the Torque King, IMHO. I almost went for the brand-new NV4500 with the Torque-King upgrade already installed, but I didn't feel like it was reasonable to put 4 grand in a '98 truck with almost 150k on the clock. Whadayathink?