5th Gear Failures

[Lube Man]

I have been searching the TDR archives trying to get a handle on the extent of the 5th gear problem. Most of the problems seem to be with pre 1999 trucks. There is talk about factory changes starting about 1998. Can anyone provide a good synopsis of the history of the problem and factory fixes or direct me somewhere? When did the factory make production changes and how effective have they been? Does anyone know the actual percentage or failure rate? For every unhappy owner who is vocal are there 10, 100, 1000, or 10,000 who have not had a problem and thus say nothing? I think these are questions all 5speed owners would like to know. The bottom line is to determine the risk factor.

 

[KatDiesel]

Please refrain from posting a link to your business website in the body of EVERY post. I edited the above post and removed the link.



Thank you



If you have any questions feel free to email me.

 

[MikeR]

it at least continues even with the '99's

Big Bob has a 1999 2500 and at 90k miles he lost his 5th gear nut. There was another TDR member in Oregon with a '99 that lost his too, but I can't remember his name. Of course the rumors were suppose to be that NVG fixed it sometime in '98... . obviously they didn't



-Mike

 

[JTBMC]

A friend of mine Bobby has a 99 3500 2 wheel drive that he pulls horse trailers with from the builder to the sales lots, with 110,000 miles and has gone through 3 transmissions at $1500 (REBUILDS) each he has also had the upgrade nuts and other fixes nothing holds up. I hope he takes my advice this time and calls Standard Trans. DC has refused to help him on any trans repair sense our 99's only come with a 36000 mile warrenty. His first trans went at 40, 000 and its be douwn hill sense. He's so pissed he swears his next truck will be a Ford.

Also my nieghbor Colby has a 1997 2 wheel drive just lost 5th and his cousin Josh's 1996 2w/d let go 2 days later. Both trucks haul equipment for a living. Bothof these guys fathers have 5 speeds one a 95 and a 99 the 99 has been replaced twice by DC but the 95 is still pulling with 160,000 and no troubles yet.

 

[Ross]

5th gear replacements

My brother's 97 went at 58K and then again at 95K. Both of these were repaired by the dealer at no cost..... Go figure. Mine went at 68K, and I repaired it myself, as I am my own warrantee station . Both our trucks pull heavy rodeo rigs for about 90% of the mileage accumulated. His latest fix was done with the "new" 5th gear nut. He now has 138,000 on it and all is well (the truck is for sale in the TDR Classifieds). My truck just clicked over 100,000 today, putting my first 5th gear fix at 32,000 (hey! I can add). Anyway, I think you can count on it happening if you're driving a 98 or 99.

 

[Turbo Thom]

For my addition, the 96 I'm driving has lost 5th 3 times and then the input shaft stripped and burned the transmission up. I nstalled a ST transmission and had that one go out at 10,000 miles. Now have another one in with 6,000 so far. I got the wife a 98 quad cab and leaned it has had fifth fixed once. Her truck has 86,000 on and mine has 222,348 miles. So in this family fifth has been fixed 4 times. .



. . Preston. .

 

[Lube Man]

Quite a few people have read my original request and several have replied. However, the basic questions I raised are no closer to being answered. Possibly there is no way to answer them excpet with input from DC.

 

[Utah Willie]

My 1999 3500 has had the fifth gear repaired twice! The first at around 16K and the second soon after. Since then, I have revised my driving habits to ease the strain on the fifth gear and all seems well. The symptoms of problems were the tendency of the transmission to jump out of gear when on a down grade after a an up grade, the E-brake kicked in. It just seemed too much for the fifth gear to handle. I now use the fourth-over on the two-speed auxiliary instead of the fifth gear.

 

[Fast 1]

An engineer at New Venture Gear once told me their warranty repair rate was less than 1 percent. This was hard to believe at first. , but their warranty period is only up to 36,000 miles. I would have to assume that most of the failures ocurr at 60- 90,000 miles. I wonder what the repair rate is for us at 90,000 miles, I'm sure it's not less than 1 percent. I understand that the problem is the mainshaft not being fully splined, not having the gear pressed on, and not having an updated fifth gear nut. It does not help matters when you complicate it with a heat problem.



When you add torque to the mighty Cummins, you add additional heat and stress to the driveline. Torque makes heat. Overdrive ratio ( fifth gear ) makes heat. One to one ratio ( fourth gear ) does not.



The 1999 Ford Z-F 6 speed manuals added an internal pump with a traditional cooler by the radiator. Their capacity is approx. 7-8 quarts. The New Venture capacity should be the same.



www.fastcoolers.com



Verlyn Fast

 

[DavidTD]

Well, I guess I'll need to get ready to change mine. I have 107k on mine and it has not failed. I wonder if rear gear ratio has anything to do with it. Mine being 4:10 I spend very little time at or under 2k rpm in 5th. Do you think the constant low rpm vibrations on 5th gear aid in it's demise?



Who knows... ...

 

[Lube Man]

There's probably several hundred thousand of these transmissions out there and we only hear about a few. The data is simply lacking. How many of the reported failures involve pulling heavy loads or bombed trucks? We just don't hear from the vast majority who have not had a problem. Again, what are the statistics for Dodge 5speed owners. 1 failure out of 10, 100, 1000, 10,000!!! What contributed to those failures? Note how little if any data has come in reply to my message other than a few people who had a problem.

 

[work2muchplay2little]

Lube Man, the only common denominator in the equation is DC. Once you step away from DC, you are looking at hundreds of dealerships, transmission shops and thousands of consumers. The data likely exists at the corporate level in internal documents that will never see the light of day unless there is legal/government action against the corporation or if an insider decides to release the data for some reason. I think the best you'll be able to do in this setting is to create a poll on both the 12 and 24 valve forums asking the question. Good luck!

 

[Fast 1]

Right on David TD and Lube Man. I agree their are thousands of them out there. New Venture Gear provides DC with aprox. 60,000 manuals every year. If 1 out of 20 had to have fifth gear fixed at least once that would be about 3000 per year during 1997, 1998, and 1999. Many trucks had it fixed more than once



With my 1997 3500 with over 300,000 miles on it, I lost track of how many fifth gear fixes it had. Probably 4 to 5 fixes. Always towing with 275 to 300 hp? No other problems at all with the rest of the truck. It was a great truck.

 

[rickhans]

I know this does not address the question, but I am going to ask anyway. How many 5th gear failures were fixed using Standard Transmission's shaft and failed again? Anybody's?

 

[DarrellB]

The way the transmission tech at my dealer told me was that the 5th gear was more prevelent in the trucks with 3:55s and it was also dependent on your driving habbits. He said to keep the rpms above 1,300 and you would be just fine for normal driving and while towing to try to keep them above 1,500. He said this would keep a lot of presure and heat off the 5th gear. I was driving a 97 4x4 with 3:55s when I ahd the 5th gear go south but this was most likely my fault since I was hauling well over 20,000lbs and lugged the motor down to about 1,000rpm in 5. The transmission held until I got on the highway and once I got up to speed it went. My truck has 4:10s and about 60,000miles and I have never had any problems out of the transmission.



Big D

 

[Turbo Thom]

Lube man:

I'm not sure what kind of information you are looking for. I lost one at 48,000. New nut installed . One at 78,000. New nut again. Another at 98,000, but this time the nut did not turn off the shaft. It was blown off the shaft with all threads stripped from the nut. New nut again but with a new torque setting and loc-tite. The nut did not come off again but the input shaft at 196,000 locked inside the bearing race and stripped all teeth off the shaft and into the transmission. New transmission from ST. at 10,000 that one burn up the cluster gears. Another one is in now. My first two nuts were covered by the extended warranty. The third one was $468. 00. Installed by the same mech. .



Now what else can I tell you about it?



. . Preston. .