Real Fiero Tech

The T-case blew up, so I figured I'd do a couple little upgrades while I was rebuilding it. Tore the rear diff apart and put in carbon clutch packs from the SVT Stangs, put lift shackles on the back, and twisted the torsion bars up a little on the front. Total cost to rebuild transfer case, diff, and the lift = $300. Got a little bigger tires too.

What I forgot was that it is a little taller than when I drove it last a month ago, and hurt my knee when I fell out

are those Firestones?

I'm sorry?

Just kidding. That does look pretty cool. I assume it was 300 buck with doing all the work/machining yourself, right? How brutal is going through the T-case? I'm just waiting for the call from back home when my mom's decides to blow up. All the fluids from the front and rear diff looked just fine, even for not being changed for 120K, but the transfer case fluid looked like death, so...

The transfer case was really pretty easy. I didn't do any machining. The bores that the shift shaft rides in were starting to oval (a known problem with the Borg Warner 4405 cases), and I probably should have bored them out and bushed them, but I'm hoping to not be DD'ing this thing by the time it fails again.





What completely disabled my truck was two little plastic inserts that ride in the arms of the shift fork. When those popped out the shift collar had enough play to ride between high and low gear. Damn retards....

The differential was kind of a nightmare. Getting this S-spring out so I could change the clutch packs was probably the worst excercise in mechanicking frustration I've experienced. Ironically it went back in very easily

Shift shaft... Is this one of the exploders that you have to shift it into 4WD? The Mountaineer seemed to have no such thing, being all time all wheel. I forget what fails in those, though I thought it had to do with the chain eventually skipping teeth (!!!).

Either way, looks like some good work, and it looks pretty good jacked up some!

The '97 Ex/Mounties had about 35 million different drivetrain options. There was SportTrac 4wd, AWD, 2WD, and regular 4WD.

Mine has a switch on the dash with three positions, Auto 4Wheel, 4Wheel HI, and 4Wheel LO. In Auto, if the PCM senses rear wheel slip it will modulate a multi-plate clutch in the T-case to drive the front wheels. In the 4Wheel HI setting, the clutch is fully engaged all the time. Switching to 4Wheel LO, the PCM activates a shift motor on the back of the case that rotates a small shaft with a helical slot cut into it (it's got the black top in the guts pic above). The "Range Fork" rides in this helix and is pushed up its shaft, locking the output shaft to the planetary carrier rather than the input shaft, gearing it down.