Hello everyone... I will introduce myself and ask some questions for my first post... I am a backcountry guy that hauls a lot of gear around in suburbans... I have an old 72 three door that is 3/4 ton, has a 4 inch lift, 36" super swampers, a 350 4 bolt bored .60 over with fuelie heads and topped with a holly single plane and 750, with a burly th 350 and np 205... i also have an old hickey sidewinder that is way cool mounted underneath... the thing is completely gutted for weight, and is pretty much off road only... that's the screamer... the other is an 82 3/4 ton with a performance crate motor that is also slightly modified for more mid range torque, with a sm465 4 speed and np 208, this is the daily driver... I live in Montana, and do quite a bit of back country travel...
O.K. Here's my first question for you guys...
I had the 82 out for an antelope hunt the other day... got to camp late at night in blizzard conditions... the rig is loaded pretty good, with a small utility trailer behind it... I did manage to get it lightly stuck in the snow due to lack of space to navigate... here's where it gets good... i mean bad...somehow, I managed to get the sucker stuck in first gear... could not get it out for anything... the shifter was almost in the nuetral position, but it was locked tight... the next day, we managed to hand dig a path through the snow drifts and get it unstuck and on flat ground... took the floor plate off and unbolted the top of the tranny to expose the innards to have a look... it just would not come off... O.K. now I am 6 foot 2 and 230 lbs without much bodyfat, and my partner is 5 foot 10 and 265 lbs, and he is not fat either, we are both avid weight lifters and pretty much all around athletic... it took everything we had including a foot and a half cat bar to finally force the top end off... once the top was removed, it did unbind after messing with the top end for awhile... I think that's where the problem originated from, but not positive... after several tries, got everything lined up, and put back together with a very leaky half assed silicone seal... now, it is very difficult to get it in and out of reverse, so we decided to abort the hunt and limp it home, some 250 miles away... I think that we may have bent something out of whack during the top end forced removal... anyhow, I do not expect to get it in and out of reverse very many times before something breaks, or it just will not come out of gear again...
So, any ideas on what happened to get this burly tranny stuck in gear like that? Any ideas on why it is near impossible to get in and out of reverse? Should I rebuild this one, or due to the possible damage caused by forcing the cover off, get another? And how much should I spend on a new one?
O.K. Here's my first question for you guys...
I had the 82 out for an antelope hunt the other day... got to camp late at night in blizzard conditions... the rig is loaded pretty good, with a small utility trailer behind it... I did manage to get it lightly stuck in the snow due to lack of space to navigate... here's where it gets good... i mean bad...somehow, I managed to get the sucker stuck in first gear... could not get it out for anything... the shifter was almost in the nuetral position, but it was locked tight... the next day, we managed to hand dig a path through the snow drifts and get it unstuck and on flat ground... took the floor plate off and unbolted the top of the tranny to expose the innards to have a look... it just would not come off... O.K. now I am 6 foot 2 and 230 lbs without much bodyfat, and my partner is 5 foot 10 and 265 lbs, and he is not fat either, we are both avid weight lifters and pretty much all around athletic... it took everything we had including a foot and a half cat bar to finally force the top end off... once the top was removed, it did unbind after messing with the top end for awhile... I think that's where the problem originated from, but not positive... after several tries, got everything lined up, and put back together with a very leaky half assed silicone seal... now, it is very difficult to get it in and out of reverse, so we decided to abort the hunt and limp it home, some 250 miles away... I think that we may have bent something out of whack during the top end forced removal... anyhow, I do not expect to get it in and out of reverse very many times before something breaks, or it just will not come out of gear again...
So, any ideas on what happened to get this burly tranny stuck in gear like that? Any ideas on why it is near impossible to get in and out of reverse? Should I rebuild this one, or due to the possible damage caused by forcing the cover off, get another? And how much should I spend on a new one?
