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Transfer Case Noise -- Broken Snap Ring

seilerts

By seilerts
in Ask A GM Technician

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seilerts Enthusiast

seilerts

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Posted
Greetings all,

I'm trying to help my father in law with his 2003 Sierra. It is a 1500, 4x4, 6 cyl, 460LE, and a floor shift transfer case. This makes it a 261? I forgot to check the tag. Anyway, the symptom is a gear grind/clash noise in 2Hi, that goes away in 4Hi/Lo. The local shop that rebuilt it three years ago wants $1200 for another rebuild. I'd rather pay for a salvage pull personally than see him go back to those shysters.

We drained the fluid. It was black and chunky. One of the larger frags looked like the remains of a snap ring. It drives fine in 4Hi, but as little as possible for obvious summertime reasons.

Questions:

1. Would a broken snap ring in the rear housing explain the noise that only happens in 2wd?
2. Do we need to crack open the case to replace it?
3. Are we kinda screwed no matter what, given what the old fluid looked like?
ChevyTech77 Senior Enthusiast

ChevyTech77

Posted
Posted
[quote name='seilerts' post='1179114' date='Jun 20 2011, 12:16 AM']Greetings all,

I'm trying to help my father in law with his 2003 Sierra. It is a 1500, 4x4, 6 cyl, 460LE, and a floor shift transfer case. This makes it a 261? I forgot to check the tag. Anyway, the symptom is a gear grind/clash noise in 2Hi, that goes away in 4Hi/Lo. The local shop that rebuilt it three years ago wants $1200 for another rebuild. I'd rather pay for a salvage pull personally than see him go back to those shysters.

We drained the fluid. It was black and chunky. One of the larger frags looked like the remains of a snap ring. It drives fine in 4Hi, but as little as possible for obvious summertime reasons.

Questions:

1. Would a broken snap ring in the rear housing explain the noise that only happens in 2wd?
2. Do we need to crack open the case to replace it?
3. Are we kinda screwed no matter what, given what the old fluid looked like?[/quote]

1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. No. Tear it down and take a look. It may have only broken the snap ring.

There really isn't much to a transfer case, especially this one, so don't be afraid to take it out, split it and take a look around. Buy a good set of snap ring pliers for transmission work and you should be good to go.
  • 3 months later...
seilerts Enthusiast

seilerts

Posted
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Posted
Okay, we finally got into this thing. Apparently, someone was looking out for my father-in-law, because his fuel pump went out before we could get it down to the shop and its been sitting. Sitting was a good thing. The rear mainshaft bearing seized and took out the snap ring (has a nice 'R' shape now), the bearing seat in the rear case, the oil pump, the 2wd/4wd shift fork, and some other small parts. See attached photos. It wasn't far off from bombing completely. We are going to have a friend transmission rebuilder take a look, but the bad part here is the damage to the case where the bearing seat is completely wallowed out, which probably doubles the cost of parts. We may just get one from a junkyard.

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