5th gear tried to die
Well I disassembled the trans today. At first we thought WTH!!! All the bearing are good, the gears look good! What is making the noise.
So we decided to separate the main 1,2,3,4 gears from the back half which is 5th and the shifter.
Then we saw it. 5th gear was trying to strip the splines off the main shaft. The splines on the gear and the main shaft were damaged so bad that the gear itself was chattering on the shaft with no load on it. So when you let off the gas it roared like hell and then when you applied power again it was dead silent. So under load the gear was engaged and off load it was able to move around and try to kill itself and the rest of the trans. I was glad to find a bad part after all that work.
A new main shaft and 5th gear are on the way from Toyota and also one bearing. So all will be well with my trans.
Even better is the FJ T-Case showed up today. It will be just dandy. Bolts right up and engaged the trans shaft splines and even has the same drive shaft flanges. So as far as I can tell it looks to be a bolt in all Toyota swap. I was able to find a T-case from a FJ with only 42,000 miles. So it is in great shape. Looking forward to in cab manual controls.
I also took the Tacoma T-case apart just to have a look see. T-case insides are cool.
Below are some pics of the bad main shaft and 5th gear as well as the FJ case loosely fit to the trans, even though its apart.
Cheers Daniel