If the Short Bus ever finds itself in need of a new name I'm going to call it Gold Mine. This thing has been a gold mine of knowledge and learning from day one. 
As soon as I get one thing fixed something else needs attended to. Before me and Marksbackhoe went exploring at Red Rocks I did both tie rod ends. It also needed the ball joint on the right side so while I had the strut out I put a bearing into it too. So we're merrily on our way out of Dove Springs and My Buddy Mike and I suddenly find ourselves playing a game of 'Identify that new noise'. We rode in low for the day because the noise was far less present but in fear of cratering the transmission we decided it had to come out for inspection.
The culprit turned out to be the bearing on the far right. It holds a pinion gear.
With the final drive pinion removed you can check out the chain that drives the front output shaft.
We whipped the final drive cover off to clean out any debris from the bottom of the gearbox. I was a little surprised as to how much RTV we picked out of this thing.
All in all this is an easy thing to do. Mustering the confidence to take the transmission apart is the hardest part. Once we got it apart we realized that there's really not much in there and it won't fall apart into a pile of bones when you pop the covers off. This gear box only has about 2000 miles on it so everything else was in great shape. The bearing is $12 All I need now is a spacer that's on order to replace one that suffered an untimely death in the press. Should be rolling by the weekend In case you want to know the gear boxes in these things are made by Team. So XPirate my man, I'm feelin' your pain buddy.
As soon as I get one thing fixed something else needs attended to. Before me and Marksbackhoe went exploring at Red Rocks I did both tie rod ends. It also needed the ball joint on the right side so while I had the strut out I put a bearing into it too. So we're merrily on our way out of Dove Springs and My Buddy Mike and I suddenly find ourselves playing a game of 'Identify that new noise'. We rode in low for the day because the noise was far less present but in fear of cratering the transmission we decided it had to come out for inspection.
The culprit turned out to be the bearing on the far right. It holds a pinion gear.
With the final drive pinion removed you can check out the chain that drives the front output shaft.
We whipped the final drive cover off to clean out any debris from the bottom of the gearbox. I was a little surprised as to how much RTV we picked out of this thing.
All in all this is an easy thing to do. Mustering the confidence to take the transmission apart is the hardest part. Once we got it apart we realized that there's really not much in there and it won't fall apart into a pile of bones when you pop the covers off. This gear box only has about 2000 miles on it so everything else was in great shape. The bearing is $12
All I need now is a spacer that's on order to replace one that suffered an untimely death in the press. Should be rolling by the weekend In case you want to know the gear boxes in these things are made by Team. So XPirate my man, I'm feelin' your pain buddy.