Thread: R380 Failure!

What gear were you in at the time?

Had the same with the LT77, but no shudder. High Country to Sydney is a long way with just 4th lo & 4th hi! Roundabouts were interesting..

Mine was a lost pin or washer or similar, the gear lever became disconnected from the gearbox, which remained in 4th.

Regards
Max P

I was in 5 th at 100 km/h!

My problem is also with the indirect gears, this has been the second R380 J suffix box fitted to my 110 flat tray Defender.
The first one had a unexplainable problem with the clutch, as the pedal suddenly went from the correct height to nearly on the floor. When the clutch was stripped down there was nothing wrong, so all we can put that down to was that the push rod was incorrectly installed and on the rough road it was travelling at the time, dropped into the correct place and definitely was not the diagnoses of a punched through throwout fork.

The reason why a second box was installed, was the original gearbox's transfer box had a annoying clunk and most likely needed the washers in the side gears of the centre diff replacing, so was put aside until a opportunity arose to repair the transfer box.

The second box ( supposedly reconditioned ) lasted well until I towed another Defender home on a car trailer, the tow done under some extreme conditions with one long steep pull lasting for about fifteen minutes at about 2,500 plus RPM in second gear, the indirect gears started to be noisy from then, which was about twelve months ago. The bearing noise in the indirect gears has since increased steadily in level, until recently when I wasn't game to use my Defender anymore until I fixed it.

After studying the options available to me, I have now opted for rebuilding a TD5 suffix L gear box, changing the bell housing over from the original J suffix R380 and with a new input shaft from Ashcrofts. This will be mated with a 1.22 ratio LT230 transfer is also from a D2 and will be rebuilt with the addition of a heavy duty cross shaft for the centre diff, the cross shaft also sourced from Ashcrofts.

I suppose that I can do some photo's.
.

I was doing a similar thing, 110 km/hr in 5th when I heard a rumbling sound, I stopped and the smell of hot gearbox was coming into the cab. Got out and confirmed that there were no leaks. A few tests when back on the road confirmed that all indirect gear selection resulted in a noise when I put drive through the box. Drove home in 4th and suffered the noise when I got caught at the lights and had to use the lower gears. On dis-assembly the gears with the red line in the following pics had mangled each other. At the gearbox re-conditioners they showed me another where the gear surfaces had just totally melted/ground down.

I suspect that something to affect the drive getting onto your layshaft perhaps like the later above has happened in your case.

Strange coincidence. My son's Disco did exactly the same thing a while ago, but we pulled it apart only today, as I wanted to see if a $550 kit was all it needed.Err, no.IMG_0257.jpg
Don't think a kit will fix that.

Originally Posted by johntins

Strange coincidence. My son's Disco did exactly the same thing a while ago, but we pulled it apart only today, as I wanted to see if a $550 kit was all it needed.Err, no.IMG_0257.jpg
Don't think a kit will fix that.

Can someone point me to the bit that tells me how to include photos?

http://www.aulro.com/afvb/general-ch...tos-forum.html

Originally Posted by toad

Well on the drive home last night my 1999 Td5 Extreme with 400000 km on the clock gave a short shudder and I lost drive in 5th! And as it turns out in 1st, 2nd and 3rd as well. Oh, and reverse!

Thoughts on a rebuild or replace?

What about taking the R380 and tfr case out of the 300TDI 130 Defender ute and putting that in to get you going and rebuilding the Extreme R380 at your leisure.

Garry