Getrag Failure

[SFerrin]

Any advice? I was surprised to have my getrag in my 224,000 91. 5 evidently go bump in the night, leaving me on the side of the highway coming back from Nevada the other night at about 1:00 am. I was traveling about 72 mph in 5th gear, unloaded, and heard a not pleasant, but hard to describe noise, and lost all forward impetus. I shut her down right away, and called for the tow truck. I've been good, and overfilled the transmission. I don't carry much in the way of loads, a two horse bumper pull trailer is my limit. There have been no indications of any problems with the transmission. I actually thought it was the clutch self-destructing. My shop here tells me that there is no 1st, 2,d, 3rd, or 5th gear. Just 4th gear. They will be opening it up tomorrow.



Anyone else had a babied, hardly roughly used, perfectly operating getrag, with the fluids recently replaced (within 4,000 miles) and with no metal in the fluid at replacement, and with no noises or indications of problems go south like this?



I'm assuming that this will be very difficult to rebuild if I've only got 4th gear right now. I'll find out their full diagnosis after they open her up tomorrow. Otherwise the pickup is perfect. OK right now it won't move except in 4th but with all that torque, maybe I'll just have an automatic one speed.

 

[mysteryman]

I don't have enough info to be able to speculate on why this happened to you... . But most that fail, fail because they are run low on oil and or have been overloaded ... . If you did not buy it new you really do not know what has been done to it in the past... If you still have 4th gear and no others you most likely broke your main drive gear and the cluster gear... . 4th is 1 to 1 ratio... ... .

At this point it hardly matters why. . Now it has to be fixed..... Read some of the other threads that I have posted..... I wrote several on the getrag...

It is a fine trans... . we figured out long ago what caused them to fail .....

This trans has to be rebuilt by some one that really knows the trans well... .

Getrag themselves was shipping them to us with the shim packs set way too tight causing the rear main shaft bearing to fail.....

If you need any further assistance feel free to pm me your phone # and I will call you back.....

Any advice? I was surprised to have my getrag in my 224,000 91. 5 evidently go bump in the night, leaving me on the side of the highway coming back from Nevada the other night at about 1:00 am. I was traveling about 72 mph in 5th gear, unloaded, and heard a not pleasant, but hard to describe noise, and lost all forward impetus. I shut her down right away, and called for the tow truck. I've been good, and overfilled the transmission. I don't carry much in the way of loads, a two horse bumper pull trailer is my limit. There have been no indications of any problems with the transmission. I actually thought it was the clutch self-destructing. My shop here tells me that there is no 1st, 2,d, 3rd, or 5th gear. Just 4th gear. They will be opening it up tomorrow.



Anyone else had a babied, hardly roughly used, perfectly operating getrag, with the fluids recently replaced (within 4,000 miles) and with no metal in the fluid at replacement, and with no noises or indications of problems go south like this?



I'm assuming that this will be very difficult to rebuild if I've only got 4th gear right now. I'll find out their full diagnosis after they open her up tomorrow. Otherwise the pickup is perfect. OK right now it won't move except in 4th but with all that torque, maybe I'll just have an automatic one speed.

 

[1stgen4evr]

It is also possible that you only need to repair a failed front bearing on the countershaft. If there were no grinding sounds and you didn't tow the truck with the driveshaft connected, you may have only lost the countershaft bearing and may be able to put new bearings throughout and go back to work. I have seen this on a couple of trannys. Open it up and look. Keep your fingers crossed



Mysteryman, that is the first time I have ever known of a reliable comment from any Dodge source as to why the Getrag failed. Thank You. I do know that when I build a Getrag I am ultra particular as to the exact preload. I have operated a Getrag for 460k miles and I have 0 complaints. (I will get the answer on the 4B tomorrow. )



James