T-5 rebuild advice and help

[blueovalz]

I'm disassembling my T5 for a rebuild to better gears. So I'm doing fine using a rebuild manual. Then I get to the part that says, "Remove one snap ring (56) and 5th driven gear(70)." So I remove the snap ring (no big deal and this is common in transmissions) and try the slide the 5th gear off the mainshaft, and it won't budge, not even .001". So I try to pry it off, no luck. Due the the unusual road track 5th gear ratio, I can't simply slip the outer bearing race over this gear, and continue to remove the mainshaft and gears out the top. So now, after repeated attempts (each more severe than the next), I finally chipped some of the teeth off this gear. So I try to disassemble the mainshaft from the front, but there's not enough room to slide everything off from the front. So far, any splined part has been a PITA to slide loose, and this is the worst of them all. A bearing puller won't work because there is only about .100" room to PARTIALLY attach one, so the press is out of the question. I've tried heating the gear itself with a propane torch (not too much though), and that did not work either. I've gone ahead and made arrangments for replacing the gear, but it must come off first.

 

Any good transmission speciallists out there that can provide some ensight into removing this gear?

[G.I.jonas]

I think maybe(remember i dont have any visual here) you should fabricate some sort of puller custom for this one part.Get creative,i have some really amazing tools in the shop that tooks hours to make and were used once for about 5 minutes.If the gear doesnt matter than you could even drill holes / weld crap to it to get something to work.

[blueovalz]

So...I went to bed, thought about it for a while trying to fall asleep, had a flash of inspiration, JUMPED out of bed (the female sleepily saying "what's wrong"), and went out into the garage to do what needed to be done. Since I'd already f***ed up the 5th gear (chipped some of the teeth), I simple ground down the teeth (ground that bastard gear steel into the dust it originated from) far enough to allow the adjacent bearing outer race to slip over the gear (which in normally geared T-5s, it will), and then pulled the whole assembly out the top as it normally should. Then with the assembly out, slapped a bearing puller around it, put it into my press and pressed the SOB off the splines. I had to put some tonage on it to break it loose, but once I got it moving, it started easing up. No way I could have gotten this thing off any other way. The only good thing from all of this is now I can go ahead and put the .59 OD gearing in it, and then my 70 MPH RPM should drop from 3000, down to 2200, which will be really nice on the highway.

 

Here is the ground down gear and the bearing race that had to slip over it.

 

 

[BillZ260]

Glad you got it out.

 

What I remember about puling mine appart was that NO WHERE in the manual did it state that you have to tear up the front main bearing to get the main shaft out. Seemingly took me forever to bite the bulltet and cut the cage, pull out the bearings and only then was removal simple. I don't know why it took me so long, I had a replacment bearing.

 

Now I remember why I didn't have the same issue you had with 5th gear, I swapped out complete a complete gearset and mainshaft. (V6 set was originally in there).