[AJD] Tranny troubles

[Karl Olmstead]

Pulled the transmission cover on that '39 H I hauled home a couple of weeks 
ago.  I had to remove the drawbar before I could find the transaxle drain 
plug.  Unscrewed it, and out came a gallon or two of water.  And that was 
all; no oil whatsoever.  That's bad; when oil is present, the water stays 
more or less trapped underneath the oil layer.  Without oil, the water 
evaporates and condenses all over the inside of the tranny, washing off the 
protective oil and rusting everything.

For some reason, the reverse and low shift fork seems to be too far to the 
left.  It isn't stuck; it does move on the shaft,  but not very far.  It 
appears to be over beyond the first gear position, and nothing I tried would 
allow it to come back toward the middle or right portion of the shaft upon 
which it slides.  I tried pounding on a block of wood to shove it over, and 
I tried rocking the tractor back and forth to help the gears mesh.

I replaced the transmission cover.  If I put the shifter in the second/third 
shift fork, it does move, although not through the full normal range.  If I 
put the shift ball in the first/reverse fork, the shift is hard over against 
the first gear position and won't budge.  You can't shift between 
first/reverse and second/third; the forks don't line up well enough for the 
shift ball to move between them.

As it is, the transmission is more or less stuck in first and third.  I need 
to get the first/reverse fork back to the right in order to let the 
second/third fork reach neutral.

So at the moment, I'm kind of stuck.  The mechanism is so covered with rust 
and mung that I really can't see what is happening down there.  And I've got 
to get at least one fork to the neutral position so that I can fill the 
tranny with diesel fuel and tow the tractor around.  A good flush with 
diesel fuel will clean things up enough that I can at least see how bad the 
gears and bearings really are.

It's been raining like crazy here.  Very unusual for the Mojave Desert.  I 
blew a hydraulic hose on my forklift yesterday, so I put a catch pan under 
it.  The rain filled it up and pushed part of the oil over the side.  That's 
in addition to the big puddle generated when the line blew.  And one of my 
Farmall tractors is puking transmission lube; the transaxle is filling up 
with water and pushing out the lube.  At least it's warm, and I have a nice 
new roof on the house.  But there's a quarter of an inch of water over much 
of the shop floor.

At least I got in some tractor time!

-Karl