Finally after finishing my ej22 swap enough to drive the car for long distances, (hauls rump roast btw, thanks to everyone who helped me directly or indirectly) the poor car has run into an old problem, although it has gotten slightly more frequent:

At low speeds, about the speed to shift into second, the car will slip into 4hi. The selector stick moves as well, so it is just a matter of waiting to go slow enough to put her back into 2wd.

Anyone have any insight into this? My manual only covers the situation where a DR trans won't go into 4lo.

Otherwise no other problems with the trans, shifts into and out of all gears and ranges.

I'm hoping that I just need to adjust the linkage or something of that nature.

I know you guys can help, thanks in advance!

Update: Drove the car tonight, and have been able to replicate the problem. It seems that with the clutch out and going full throttle seems to make the trans want to pop in to 4hi by itself. I let it happen a couple of times and I know it can't be good for her to do that. I can actually watch the selector lever start to move forward. It stays in 2wd if I either lift off the throttle, step on the clutch, or physically hold the lever in place.

My girlfriend says that this only happened once with the old ea82. Could it be due to me not having a pitch stopper yet? It's the only reason I can think of, I don't have a lot of knowledge on these transmissions.

Cheers boys!

That's it. No pitch stopper combined with weak tranny mounts. When you gas it hard, the engine wants to tip forward from the torque causing the rear of the tranny to lift up changing the physical distance between the lever in the vehicle and the lever on the tranny. The EA81 & 82 tranny mounts were kinda hokey anyway. Check them and the engine mounts to make sure they're not going soft.

The EJ engine complicates the motor/tranny mounts a bit.  What do you use for mounts, and where do they go?  No flex in the mounting points for them, is there?

 

I once had a ride in a beast of an F250 on a bad, bad road,  The owner used a bungee cord to stop the shift lever from bouncing out of 4 low into neutral.  Would this help in the short term, until you can get it sorted properly?

Edited November 22, 20169 yr by robm

Thanks for the response fellas! I'm a little amazed that what I thought was the problem was actually the problem! Not the case at all while trying to figure out the ecu and wiring harness!

I think the bungee cord will work, but I will definitely rig up a pitch stopper asap! And replace the mounts, I just reused the motor mounts and didn't even mess with the trans mounts!

That's a relief indeed, I'll just drive the car easy until the next wrenching and beer session

You'll most likely break a motor mount in short order too without the pitch stopper installed. I would drive "gently" until you install one

Beating the carp out of my Loyale with the EJ22e and no pitch stopper...This was probably 20-30k after the swap was done.

 

 

 

I took that motor out about 60k after the swap (and over 250k on original motor mounts), and they were not broken. This was with a FT4WD transmission, but I drove it for about a year (10-15k) in FWD.

 

 

That said, it's very possible that drivetrain movement is what's causing the issue. It's not impossible for motor mounts to break...

 

Is this an EA81 or EA82 car? Transmission?

you can take the 4wd shift lever out, put it in the vice and bend it a bit.

It is an ea82 car with the part time 4wd, my girlfriend just drove the car 240 miles round trip to her moms house for Thanksgiving, not a problem at all, I guess she can drive the car better than me!

Cheers boys

I get the occasional 4hi as well. Noob to terms here, but what is a pitch stopper?

I get the occasional 4hi as well. Noob to terms here, but what is a pitch stopper?

 

I had to do a search for that as well.  It seems to be the brace that runs from the bellhousing to the cowl area to limit how far the engine moves/stresses the mounts.  I was wondering what that thing in my way was when I was locking up the flywheel while undoing the crankshaft bolt.

Edited November 25, 20169 yr by DeltaWye