Last weekend was really a flatbed adventure.  [464] made it back home Sunday afternoon via flatbed tow truck.  I didn’t know if the center differential was shot after the break down on the way to Prescott Friday morning, but the sun hadn’t been up long Monday morning before I was up to my eyeballs in Mitsubishi repairs.

I was worried I might have lost the viscous center differential in the Galant VR4, so I began removing bits to prepare for a transmission removal.  When the car was moving, particularly around corners, there was a whining, dry gear noise coming from the front end.  This is never a good sign.

One of the steps involved in pulling the transmission is to remove the transfer case.  A healthy transfer case looks like this one at the shop.

Notice that seal around the input shaft.  Compare that to the one on the transfer case out of [464]…

The tcase had been filled with Synchroshift, which was obviously what I was smelling when the car broke down on the way to Prescott Friday.  The tcase holds 0.6 quarts of fluid.  Here’s how much came out of this tcase when I drained it.

What’s more, after the fluid had a chance to sit in the drain pan for a few minutes, there was some sparkle motion going on in it.  Never a good sign to have metal bits floating in your gear oil.

At this point, I knew the transfer case was roached, but what about the transmission itself?  I had checked the fluid level on the side of the road while waiting for the flatbed to arrive and found it to be low, if not dry.  Would I have to pull the transmission as well?

The transmission holds 2.4 quarts of fluid.  I think I easily got 2 quarts out of it and it came out clean, if not a little tired.  This was a good sign.  I spent about $50 buying Hyundai 75W/85 GL-4 from the local Mitsubishi/Hyundai dealership and refilled the transmission.  Now it was time to source a replacement tcase for [464].

A while back, my friend Kris Marciniak and I were talking about my getting a cheap second car to drive while I prepped my other Galant VR4 [195] for rally.  His concern was that, if I got another VR4, I’d end up spending money on modifications and repairs to it instead of on my rally car.  He made a great point, but I’m feeling fortunate that I ended up with two VR4s, as I now have a spare everything.

I was horrified to discover that the tcase in [195] was bone dry too, but it had not been making any noise prior to being parked back in the spring of 07 and hadn’t seen more than a trip around the block since that time.  I filled it up with Royal Purple gear oil (couldn’t find Redline anywhere on a Monday afternoon, go figure) and installed it.

All’s well that ends well, although I noticed that [464] now has a transmission leak at the passenger side axle seal.  This won’t require pulling the transmission to repair, but I’m flat broke now and hope to keep it topped off with fluid until later this month, when I can pull the axles and install new seals.

I’ve been keeping regular tabs on the transmission and tcase since this repair.  The tcase is staying dry at all points and the transmission itself has not pushed any fluid out the breather vent on top of the bell housing.  I can live with a few drips here and there, as much as that irritates me.

It will be a few months before [195] needs a tcase, since I’m getting ready to pull the engine and all that to prepare for the roll cage.  In the meantime, I just hope that getting [464] back up to 100% doesn’t take too much time or money.  Transmission is shifting like butter this week and I’m enjoying an improvement in performance after what was a lengthy, draining repair job.