I guess I blew this subject way a moment ago, sorry. I was trying to edit my comment. Anyway we lost the tranfer case at hiway speeds a couple of weeks ago. The Truck is a 1999 Dakota with a 5.1 V8 Extended Cab with Automatic Trany. It has been a really great truck with very little trouble before this. We have had oil changes and maintenance usually at the 3000 mile mark and once in a while out as far as 5000 miles. The shop that is working on it said that the gears looked in good shape and they had never seen a failure like this before. Are there really 9 different Transfer setup in the Dakota lineup? They said that they had to have one assembled as we had blown the part number off the case with it came apart. Thanks Lowell @ Eagle View Home of the 5MM Craig
Yes, there are several variants of the NV230 (231, 232, 233....) series transfer cases. The one you have should be easily figured out by what shift selector you have (manual lever or pushbutton) and by getting a build data printout from any dealer based on your VIN.
Engine oil changes will have no effect on transfer case maintenance. If it was never checked, the TC could easily have been low on fluid and simply worn itself out.
I finally got to see the damaged transfer case and front driveshaft. The interior of the transfer case were in great shape, still looked new with very little sign of wear. The failure was with the Transfer Case end U-joint on the front drive shaft. It failed and allowed the drive shaft to shift and wedge against the transfer case blowing up the case. We paid two garages to look at the u-joints within a month of the failure. I wish we still had self-service garages like we had in the
1970 where you could hoist a rig and look for your self. I have a physical impairment that prevents me from crawling under a car or I would have done the inspection my self. I guess I need to build somethng that will allow me to stand and work under a rig. Thanks for all the ideas and discussion. These groups are a great resource. Lowell
if you have the money to build something you may want to look at a parking/service lift they are drive on lifts. i would imagine you would spend close to the same amount of money on the steel to build something (or more) to drive up on that would be tall enough to allow you to work on the vehicle.
Chris, I think he meant something for him to be able to stand and work, not to lift the car. However, I agree 100% on the drive-on-lift requirement, as it eliminates the need to crawl around putting lift arms under the vehicle. Plus, in the case of trucks with the forward weight bias, I think they are safer than the outrigger style.
yes especially for the homeowner and for wheel service the air powered jacks such as is found on alighnment racks are avail. its on my wish list (wonder what the arch control commitie would think about a lift in the drive way
's my 15K 4-post lift. Long wheel base, 22" wide ramps (dually-friendly). Here's how I brought it home from the freight dock:
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's my 10K two-post lift. I got that one first. A buddy and I unloaded that one by hand off of a semi that delivered it. Not a lot of fun. It was handy to have to unload the 4-poster from the trailer... I backed the trailer into the bay, and used the lift arms of the two-post lift to take components off the trailer - couple of pieces at a time. The two-post lift was fairly easy to install with just two people and basic tools (a rotary hammer would be helpful for drilling the concrete for the anchors - I did it with my little 24V hammer drill, but it took a while). The only heavy lifting is lifting the columns upright - I was able to do that myself (probably should have two people for safety, but I was impatient).
The four-post lift needs some type of machinery - forklift, backhoe, something that can lift 800lbs. about 8 feet. That's the main beam with hydraulic cylinder that spans the columns. It's about 14' long. We did it with a combination of an engine hoist, a tranny jack, and some 6x6 blocks. I don't recommend that for anyone else... it was decidedly unsafe. The tracks weigh close to 1,000lbs. each, but they can be moved around on some moving dollies. Oh yeah - the four post lift needs 16 holes drilled in the concrete to anchor it. I rented a rotary hammer for that, after burning up the motor in my little hammer drill on the 2nd hole (amazing how much harder concrete is with it's 2 years old vs. 1 month :)
Ok, I take it back, YOU REALLY SUCK!!!!! What is the length / width, it looks like 40 X 50. That thing is huge. Did you have to have anything special done to the floor when it was poured to deal with the lifts (especially the 2 post one)?
it's beautiful! i had real problems getting to your pics. my adaware is programmed to block pop-ups and crashes the browser. in opera you get to your home directory but when you click on an image a pop-up generates and opera crashes. grudgingly i opened explorer -- in explorer this means 6-7 pop-ups generated by earthlink before it crashes. determined as i was, i reopened opera and saved all the images to hard drive instead to look at them
since i already downloaded them, and have some good tools, i am going to take ten minutes to make you an index page with thumbnails of each pic and links to full sizes and send it to you in a zip file for ideas if you want to look at them
32x56, actually... shoulda went 40' deep... and shoulda went another bay wide. Coming from a single 12'x20' garage, I thought the new one would be way bigger than I needed. Wrong... :)
Eagle (as well as most other lift companies) was a minimum of 4" of 3500psi concrete. I had a 3500psi mix, with a 4" slab (wire re-inforced), but the guys doing the floor dug out around where the columns were going to be placed, so I've got a little over 6" of concrete under the posts (in a roughly oval shape, about 4' wide by about 6' long). It probably would have been fine with a 4" slab throughout, but they wanted to make sure I didn't have any problems. I wasn't going to argue :)
We also planned for the columns, so the expansion joints that were cut into the slab didn't run under, or anywhere near, the columns.
AFAIK, there weren't any pop-ups at all... it's just a crappy little 10MB personal web space, and just raw .JPG files. Of course, now it's got the images you re-did for me (thanks again) :)
I see none of these. I don't even get a pop-up warning. In fact, I turned off my pop-up blocker completely, and tried it again. No pop-ups.
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