V160 Transmission Repair

By Carey Morris

This page will document my adventures of attempting (so far) to repair my broken and undrivable 6sp manual transmission. I created this page to allow people to assist me in that endeavor. Wish me luck and PLEASE HELP.

References

The Problem

I was giving a demo ride when suddenly something was VERY wrong with the tranny. I couldn’t find any gear but 1st and 2nd. Uh oh. All I could imagine was the big bucks people were paying for new or used 6spds. The best deal was $2200 from Tap Recycling guaranteed for 6 months. It was off a 93.5 of unknown mileage. At least that was guaranteed. If I bought a used one from someone, there would be no way to tell if it was good until I had it on, and that would be way too late.

Oh, and my third gear synchros seems to be having a problem and very high rpm's speed shifts. Not good.

When I disassembled the shifter, I found 2 of the 4 bolts that hold on the plate were stripped out. The other 2 were loose. So maybe that allowed the shifter to travel too far forward breaking the linkage inside the tranny.

The Plan

I knew Jeff Watson @ Jay Marks Toyota made replacement parts but I didn’t consider that option at first until I talked with Jeff. He convinced me to give it a shot. What the hell, the worse I can do is screw up a tranny that is screwed up anyway. So, with parts from Jeff, I could theoretically fix this SOB including the 3rd gear synchros. Mohammad convinced me to take lots of pictures in order to document the steps. Thanks to Bill Hansen for letting me borrow his digital camera. Hopefully, people who read this can contribute there input.

I know there may be special tools required for pulling gears so I might consider just getting the linkage fixed and not worrying about the 3rd gear synchro. I dunno. I'm also concerned about using the Redline D4 ATF. Could that have contributed to the problem?

Day 1 - Teardown

While dropping the tranny, I had a nasty surprise with the striped bolts. I put new ones in thinking that was the problem...but no. Here is the removed shifter and external linkage to the tranny.

Next was the companion flange. I bought a 32mm socket and a universal gear puller from Sears. Using my impact wrench, the bolt came off with no problem. Then I used the gear pulley to pull off the companion flange. That baby was on there. Pictured are the companion flange/washers/bolt/lock and they gear puller. Also the output shaft of the tranny that the companion flange was removed from. Note the seal that is now accessible. I think toyota wants big bucks to replace this $6 seal. I'll do it for less. :)

 

Now I placed the tranny on its bell housing on wood. Good thing I did too. Next, I removed the 10 13mm bolts to release the upper transmission case marking the exterior bracket positions. There are 3 main exterior parts, the upper case, the middle case and the bell housing. I hit the upper casing with a plastic mallet to break the seal and it removed easily. This exposed half of the internals and I found 2 steel balls sitting on a couple of the shafts. I was surprised they were still there and did not fall off.

 

 

Here are a couple of internal shots of the upper housing.

 

At this point, I took out the magnet and found (or Brian found) a pin. That certainly would explain whey the linkage failed if this pin was suppose to be in there somewhere. Note that the pin is a wound metal sheet...not just a steel pin. What type of pin is this?

 

Now I attempted to removed the middle casing and gears from the bell housing. I removed the 10 or so bolts but was unable to get the sections to separate. I could get the sections to separate by about 1 inch before it would not go further. Here is a pic of the part that I think was preventing the sections from separating.

Note: I meant to say "can't really see the slot" on the picture - not "can".

 

Here we have a view of the upper gears and the input shift shaft.

 

And finally, some pics of the gears. A work of art. We can see a couple of synchros in these pics.

 

OK...so how do I get this apart? How do I get those pins out? What are these pins called? SAVE THE TRANNY!