Old Transfer Case Problems in 1988-2000 Dodge Chevy GMC Trucks and SUVs

What the... We're gonna have to check that out. Okay, so we've all got our trucks that we know and love. Maybe you push snow with them, maybe you tow something with them, but for some reason, you just get this transfer case death grind that just rattles through the truck, and it scares the crowd out of you, right? We want to try to figure out what's going on. I want to show you a couple of different things we can look for, and I want to show you exactly where the problem lays, and hopefully, it's gonna help you figure out what's going on with your vehicle as well. Let's get started.

Okay, so the noise that we have happens whether it's in two-wheel drive or four-wheel drive, right? So that's important to remember, because if it was only in four-wheel drive, it's a possibility that it could be this right up here, okay? And what this does is it works by vacuum. When you put your vehicle into four-wheel drive, it gets vacuumed from the engine, comes down these hoses, goes into here, and it moves a little pinion back and forth, okay? When it moves that, it actuates the front drive, the front axles inside the axle here, and locks them in, so that when you turn this drive shaft right here, these are gonna want to turn.

If you don't have very good vacuum right here, and this is trying to actuate, but for some reason, they can't actuate the differential over or the little coupler over to lock in those axles, you're gonna get a little grind noise, and it's gonna come from up here, but that's only gonna be trying to go into four-wheel drive. If this noise happens in two-wheel drive, you have to come back here, and this is gonna be a very common problem with a lot of different vehicles, especially in this age year range.

This type of transfer case right here, what happens is is inside here you have your output shaft from your transfer case. There's supposed to be a little snap ring in there that goes around that shaft. Well, the snap ring breaks, and then the shaft in there can go like this in and out, and so then it's not making the great gear mesh inside the transfer case. And so when that shaft can move in and out, it comes out like this, and it's just grabbing on the edges of the teeth, and it's making that noise.

If we can get that to stay in, maybe replace that clamp or whatever's inside there, this is gonna be held together better, and we won't have that noise, okay? The clamp breaks, the output shaft can move away from the gears inside there, and they're just not copacetic anymore. And the reason why this does this in two and four-wheel drive is because anytime that this vehicle is moving, this rear driveshaft is gonna be moving. Whether it's in two or four-wheel drive, this will be spinning as long as the vehicle is moving.

Okay. So let's take off the rear driveshaft. We're gonna come right back here. Make sure you spray this down with some penetrating spray. The bolts come through from the backside there sometimes. I just like to soak the whole thing. We'll let that sit and do its job. So it's a good idea to mark your driveshaft. And that's so we can remember exactly where this is gonna go. With that done, remove the bolts that are holding on this where there should be four of them. You can spin it around. There we go.

There's one. I'm assuming the rest should look about the same. This cover comes off. Make sure you don't lose any of this. Be careful when removing the last one. Obviously, the driveshaft could come down and potentially hurt you. Awesome. Put that bolt down. I'm just gonna put a collection bucket directly underneath this. Use a nice long pry bar. Go right in between this part of your driveshaft and the yoke on your rear differential. Should want to pop out. You want to be careful with these caps. They have little bearings in there, and you do not want to lose those.

Let's bring this down to a working level. Give your caps a spin. Those feel good. I'm just gonna use a little bit of tape. Use whatever you've got. We just want to hold this on. Make sure those caps do not fall off. That should be good. Carefully remove your driveshaft. Okay, so you can see where the outer portion of the output shaft is. It travels in through here. We've got to remove these four bolts.

At this point, use a rubber mallet. We're gonna separate this. And right here a little bit of fluid's coming out. Pull this off of here. Let's see. There's our problem. Okay, so this is what the clamp is supposed to look like, right? Pretty much goes all the way around. You use your little tool, you pinch it, and it separates the two. You can slide it over that output shaft, and then it's supposed to slide right into the little slot. Obviously, this is garbage. It's very common for these to break, especially in this type of transfer case, so we're gonna go ahead and upgrade that to something that looks more like this. Right along this edge, it has a little lip, which is basically the same exact width as this, and that's gonna hold on. And then we're gonna be able to tighten it up, and there's no way that this is gonna break no matter how much plowing is done.

So if you look right here, when I pull this out, you can see the groove where that snap ring's supposed to ride. Every time you hear that grinding noise, this is what's happening. This pushes in, it dislodges the gears from inside the transfer case, and then it pops back out and then back in, back out, does whatever it wants to do, causes a major issue and that big scary sound that nobody likes to hear. So let's get our new upgraded locking ring right on to this output shaft. Okay, so it's time to get this up on here. I'm gonna take one half.

Of course, if you're using your snap ring, you can just slide the snap ring over there and, you know, put it together. For me, personally, I'm going with the upgraded kit here, already get this one started in there, start the other one in, of course. These are nice long bolts. Okay. We're gonna make sure we torque these to specification. All right, so let's go ahead and torque this down. Nice.

So now we're gonna clean up this area and make sure we get off any residual gunk. Make a nice smooth surface right here. We're gonna put a little bit of gasket maker on there. Okay, so let's clean up this end. We want to make sure we get all the crud off of this side right here as well. So we're just gonna use some gasket maker around this area right here. Just put it on there. I'll smooth it all out in a second. With a gloved finger, I'm just gonna spread it around so it looks nice and pretty. Yes, very nice.

Okay, so when looking at the tail shaft housing here, you're gonna notice your seal has a little weep hole. That needs to be facing down. It's easy enough to remember. Slide it right over here. Beautiful. Let's start in our bolts. Just gonna bottom these out. Torque these to manufacturer's specifications. Torqued. While the driveshaft's out, it's a good idea to do this with your U-joints just to make sure that they're not frozen. This one feels great.

All right. We're gonna clean up this area here on the yoke and this one right here and then these flat areas right there. Beautiful. Let's get our tape off of here, holding the caps, of course. Okay, so we've got our driveshaft. We're gonna line it up just like this. It should want to slide in. I'm gonna grab my rubber mallet, another side in. Let's get our little cap here with our two bolts and start them in. The other cap on here. And if you mixed up the caps, that part doesn't really matter so much. I'm just gonna work my way around here. Okay, that's tight, for sure. Tight, tight, tight, tight.

Okay, so we got the driveshaft in, and we're pretty sure that we've got the noise fixed, but before we get it back down on the ground and on to the road to test it out, I want to check and replace the transfer case fluid in here just in case, God forbid, there is some sort of damage. This is the fill plug. We'd remove this first and remove this second, but, of course, we have a little shield here. I'm gonna take down the mounting bolts that hold my shield so I have a nice clear way to drain this fluid. I'm gonna put it into a recycling receptacle, and we can go from there. Okay. Remove the fill first, of course. You definitely want to make sure that that comes out. Get our bucket under here. Put on my safety glasses. We've got no fluid coming out yet. Time for the drain.

Okay, so I grabbed a clear cup, and I'm gonna try to catch the first bit of this fluid here, at least half a cup, because I want to be able to inspect it. Wow, yeah, this transfer case is hurting for certain. Now, I'm just going to let it drain out. Okay, so we can see the metal swirls in there. That pretty much tells us that the transfer case is hurting for certain. This vehicle's a '96, and it's been pushing snow its whole life. So we're 2019 almost to '20 now, so 20-something years.

Let's just wipe this down a little bit. I'm gonna plug this. I don't need to put it in all the way, because all I'm gonna do right now is just put in a little bit, maybe about half a quart, and then I'll pull this again and let it see if I can get out any other residual fluid that's stuck in the bottom. There we go. Take that out of there, get our bucket under here, and see what's going on. That looks much better.

I'll let that finish draining out, clean this area up. You can wait for the fluid to finish draining out if you'd like. I'm just gonna tighten this up, nice and tight. So now we're just gonna add fluid until it just barely starts trickling out of the fill hole. Once it's doing that, we'll let it finish trickling, cap it off, take it for a road test. So just add your manufacturer-specific transfer case fluid.

So it's coming to a trickle now. We'll just let it finish doing its thing. Just wipe this area off right here and get this in there. Make sure it's nice and tight. Make sure you clean down the area. We're gonna take our bolts and just put this back up. Okay, so you could have some bearing noises from other places. Inside your differential, you're gonna have a bearing up here, you've got some over here, you've got down at the end of the tube, of course. There's all bearings in there. So if you're hearing growling coming from the back here, it could be from any of those areas, even the U-joint here, which is pretty unlikely but possible. The noise that we were hearing though was coming from up inside the center of the vehicle towards the transfer case area, and this is a very common problem, so I wanted to show you how to fix it. And we did see that we had a bad snap ring in there, so we went right to the problem, we found it. Yes, let's take it for a road test.

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