Camaro98

Hi, bheinen74. I didn't look up the instructions on seating the converter beforehand, no. I had done transmission jobs on a couple of Camaro's in the past, and felt familiar with seating converters from those jobs (although the Subaru converter does sometimes give a little more hassle on the way in). The guy helping me was a used-Subaru dealer/mechanic from my church who had done a number of these jobs before. Looking up the procedure afterward, the guy who helped me did follow the procedure....not that it helped in my particular case, as is explained below. Anyway, I didn't realize that I never posted an update to follow up in this thread. The car has been running and driving fine since the last week or so of May. I used the front differential& pinion from the toasted junkyard transmission with the torque converter and main transmission section from the original transmission. The wife has put about 1300 miles on the car since then, with no problems. The gears in the original front diff were undamaged, but the forward pinion shaft bearings were definitely bad. While there wasn't any noticeable play, the bearings felt very pitted when spun by hand....much like often happens with the rear wheel bearings on these things. While taking the junkyard tranny apart, we found out that the large splined shaft from the torque converter had fractured where it goes into the front pump. There were metal particles and shavings throughout the hydraulics, which meant having to flush the cooler and lines on the car. My helper that day was the one who seated the converter. He works on these cars as his living, and he was hesitant to let me use the transmission in the first place when we pulled the converter off to replace the seal. When we pulled the converter, a little bit of water trickled out from the direction of the front pump. The splined shaft had a few patches of surface rust on it, too. We cleaned the rust and he seated the converter when I insisted that I wanted to try the tranny out, and it went on hard. Not "I can't get it to seat properly" hard, but "it doesn't even want to spin very easily" kind of hard. There was something wrong in that front pump area to begin with, and we really knew better than to use that transmission. On that one, I took a gamble and lost. Because of the resistance we encountered, yes it could be possible that the resistance kept my assistant from being able to properly "feel" that the torque converter was seating properly, and that he may have forced it in far enough...but not properly. Again, just spinning the converter each direction while he tried to seat it was a dead giveaway that something really wasn't right to begin with. Seating the original torque converter on the original transmission was a snap. Spun it left, then right, then clunk...it went right into place. It spun normally, too. Swapping the front diff, while needing to be very careful, is not a hard job once the transmissions are on the floor or a bench; and it can be done with a conventional arsenal of mechanic's tools. Seanrob, yes I do still have all of the parts to the H6 transmission, including the front differential/bell housing.

Also check the pins in the connectors. I had the same thing happen to me, and it turned out to be a pin that had been pushed out of the connector when I connected the two corresponding sides together. In my case, I separated the connectors, popped the pin back in place, and then reconnected the connectors again while watching to see if that pin popped out again. In my case, it stayed put the second time around. I can't recall what color the wire was.

Clicking sound in park? Do you mean like a ticking noise that is audible while the engine is running? How loud? Does the noise happen only in PARK, or will it do it in other gears with your foot on the brake as well? Does it change at all in relation to the engine RPMs while in PARK? And you say that the transmission is slipping?? Hopefully it's not the case, but I had symptoms like those with the junkyard transmission that some guys and I put in my Forester last month. It drove great for about 36 miles....then started making loud ticking noises from the front diff area at low RPMs (in PARK, stopped at a light, low speeds, etc) that would fade as the car got up to speed (sometimes not). I checked for loose or missing torque converter bolts, but all were there and tight. The next day, the transmission started to slip...and that began to slip a LOT. When we pulled the transmission back out and tore it down, I found out that the torque converter shaft (the larger, hollow shaft around the longer, narrower one) had broken where it goes into the front pump. It was a jagged break, and the fit of the jagged edge (like a coupling) allowed the broken halves of the shaft to keep turning together. The car drove for almost 90 miles like that before I pulled the transmission back out and realized what was going on! How did it happen? Probably because of what grossgary warned about above. We had a hard time seating the torque converter--much harder than it should have been. The tranny's donor car had been in a front end collision, and all we could figure was that the impact must have damaged something to do with the front pump or torque converter shaft. The torque converter probably wasn't seated as well as we thought it was. Again, hopefully that's not the case with yours. Check your shifter cable to be sure that it's installed correctly and is correctly adjusted. I've seen similar, though non-severe, symptoms like yours out of older Chevy transmissions when the shifter cables were slightly out of adjustment. It could be something that simple...but you're going to need to troubleshoot and try to pinpoint the source of that sound.

Well, after all of the front diff questions, I figured that I would post an update now that the work is done and the transmission is back in the car. The end result is that the forward pinion bearings (at front diff end of pinion shaft) were shot. This was confirmed when I got the bad pinion out of the transmission and spun it in hand. The sounds that the bearings (or at least one of them, anyway) made while turning were definitely not good. Kind of dry and crunchy. The ring and pinion gears were not damaged. Mostly because of time (needing the car back as fast as possible), and partly because of money (the bearings were priced at $45 each), I decided to swap the front diff and pinion with known good parts from the junkyard transmission that I bought to fix this problem in the first place. That transmission was shot, anyway....drove great for about 36 miles and then the torque coverter shaft (the larger shaft that goes over the smaller, longer shaft) broke. Good for nothing but parts at that point. On the whole, the operation was a success. The car is running and driving again, and is not making that piercing, obnoxious whirring whine anymore (happened under load). For anybody who has never done this before or is researching due to the same problem, here is the brief version of the repair: 1. Remove the transmission from the car. (A long procedure in itself) 2. Remove the torque converter from the transmission. 3. Remove the 14mm nuts and bolts from the front differential housing. 4. Separate the front differential housing from the transmission. 5. Remove the four 14mm pinion flange bolts from the pinion flange. 6. Remove the 12mm tailshaft housing bolts. 7. Remove the tailshaft housing from the transmission. (Be careful with the clutch pack and the steel gasket---especially the steel gasket) 8. Remove the large nut and washer from the pinion shaft. 9. Using a block of wood or a punch, drive the pinion shaft out of the reduction gear with a hammer. 10. Pull the pinion and the pinion flange shim out of the transmission from the front of the transmission. 11. Repeat steps 2 through 7 on the donor transmission. 12. Note the position of the large pinion shaft nut and mark the position of the nut to the shaft. 13. Repeat steps 8 through 10 on the donor transmission. 14. Install donor pinion shaft, with donor flange shim, to the original transmission. Seat firmly into the reduction gear at the rear of the transmission. 15. Loosely install the four 14mm pinion flange bolts. 16. Install the large pinion nut and washer to the pinion shaft at the reduction gear. Tighten nut to the marked position. 17. Tighten the four 14mm pinion flange bolts. 18. Reinstall the original tailshaft with 12mm bolts. 19. Install donor front differential case with 14mm bolts and nuts. 20. Reinstall the original torque converter. 21. Reinstall the transmission into the car. It probably wouldn't hurt to check the gear lash after everything is bolted back in place. Because of micro-differences between casings, new sealants, or margin of error, there may be enough of a difference between the old parts and the "new" ones to upset the lash.

Yet another question about Forester front diff repair.... I've figured out how to remove the front diff case, the tailshaft case, and then the pinion. However, the large drive gear that the pinion shaft slides into (at the back of the transmission in the tail area) is staying put. I want to pull that gear out and replace that pinion bearing with the front bearings. How do I get that gear and the bearing off? Just in case, has anyone removed the bearing from the output shaft/pinion drive gear from the transmission, too?

If it's just on acceleration, it sounds like the pinion in the front differential to me. I recently swapped out the transmission in my Forester because it was making a bad whine in the front diff...bad pinion bearing, or pinion and ring gears, or both. Installed the new (used) whole transmission, and the sound was gone. The whine that the original transmission produced, at first, only happened during acceleration. As it got worse, it was audible at maintained highway speeds, then sub-highway, then anything above 12mph regardless of acceleration. The noise is always worse when accelerating, though. Let off the pedal, and the sound goes away.

I just tore down a core transmission (to remove front diff and pinion, anyway) for practice, and that tailshaft gave me a little bit of trouble, too. What I did was alternately whack each side of the tailshaft with my mini-sledge until the seam opened up enough to get a flat-head screwdriver in there and pry it apart. On mine, the clutch pack had a tight fit on that "cup" attached to the large transmission gear. If you try the hammer trick, use a block of wood against the tailshaft case to avoid damaging it.

I'm changing the front diff and pinion shaft because the front diff in the original transmission is shot. When it was in the car, I had a lot of high-pitched whining and buzzing going on; it was diagnosed by a transmission shop as a bad pinion bearing in the front diff. I would just get the bearings changed, but I have been warned by a handful of mechanics that the gears are likely damaged after driving the car like that for the last 7 months. And I do not want to pay $325 for a new ring and pinion set if that can be avoided. Maybe I'll get lucky and find out that the problem is just a carrier bearing when it's all taken apart, and the gears will be fine. That's probably hopelessly optimistic, but there's only one way to find out for sure... ...I still need to know about the shims and pinion nut torque, though...

Well, I got some practice in last night. I have another phase II transmission that came out of an H6 Legacy (have been trying to sell it, but no takers); and since it has been uselessly cluttering up my garage, I decided that it would make a good guinea pig. Taking it apart was actually a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. The front diff case was straight forward, but had to be coaxed with a mini sledge and a pry bar to separate the cases after the bolts were removed. Removing the pinion was easy as well....4 bolts at the front flange, and the large staked nut at the rear end of the shaft. The pinion bearing came out on the pinion shaft, apparently preloaded and staked in position. All in all, I feel confident about doing the work on the good transmission after seeing the guts of this one. Now for more questions: 1. When installing the donor pinion into the transmission that I will be using, do I use the pinion flange shim(s) from the donor transmission, the accepting transmission, or does it not matter because they're all the same? I want to make sure that the pinion depth is correct. 2. Is there a torque spec for the large nut at the rear of the pinion shaft? 3. There is a rigid gasket for the tailshaft housing. Is this gasket safe to re-use? If so, can it be reinstalled without any RTV as it originally was? 4. I didn't see a gasket on the front diff housing. Does anyone know what Subaru originally used to seal the housing to the transmission case? Thanks again, guys!

Thanks for the info, guys. The thread was a good insight into what I'm considering with this project. How do you remove the pinion shaft, though? I know that you remove the front diff case, and then the tailshaft. What do you do after that?

Hi guys, I've been looking all over the internet for instructions on how to remove the front differential from the transmission on my 4EAT automatic transmission, but all I can find are instructions for manual transmission cars. Does anyone here know how to properly remove/reinstall a front differential on a pase II 4EAT? What's going on is: I have a 2001 Forester (auto) that had a buzzing front diff. The transmission shop diagnosed it as a bad pinion bearing. Rather than pay the shop up to $1100 to rebuild the front diff, I decided to get a whole used transmission. I installed it, drove it (problem-free) for about 30 miles, and then the "new" transmission went bad (acting like torque converter or front pump). Lots of symptoms and a code P0741 (Torque converter something-or-other stuck closed). Toast. So, the replacement tranny has a good front diff, but a bad auto transmission. I want to take the good front differential off of the bad transmission, and swap it with the bad front diff on the original (good) transmission. I know this has been done, but can't find instructions and don't want to botch it by going in blind. Any instructions and/or exploded view diagrams of this procedure for a 4EAT would be a really big help.

...I'm no expert, but I have to disagree that the belt being off a tooth wouldn't hurt gas mileage. I had that happen to me before on a '98 Legacy L with the 2.2 VIN 3 motor. From the time my wife bought the car to when I changed the timing belt, the best gas mileage the car ever got was in the low 20's mpg. We just figured it was because of high miles and the AWD. It seemed to run okay, for a 4-cyl...no noticeable missing or rough idle, etc. I ended up changing the timing belt while performing a repair that involved tearing down that far, anyway (crank pulley...long story...but had to check the timing gear while I was at it). The timing marks didn't line up. The left side cam was off one tooth on the belt. I installed a new belt, making sure that the marks were properly aligned, and slapped everything back together. Believe it or not, when we tracked the gas mileage the next week, the car was doing just about 30 mpg. I couldn't believe that one tooth made that kind of difference, but there it was. I wouldn't rule out double checking your timing marks.

That's what I'll do, then. I'll list it both on the site you suggested and back on craigslist. Thanks for the direction!

I may have to try that. I've never sold something so large online, though....how would I ship the transmission after someone bought it?

You're right about the the gear numbers; those are the same ones I got. My transmission code is TZ1A3ZC2AA-P8. I found a salvage yard nearby today that has a transmission with matching numbers for $690.00. 124k miles. The seller of the incorrect transmission I bought seems to be ignoring me. Looks like I am going to have to re-sell this transmission if I want to recapture any of the money I spent on it. So much for avoiding the high prices at the salvage yards. Life lesson learned.