Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillcat
Not sure which transfer case you have, but I have an ATC500 in my garage off my old '05 4.8 that you can have if you pay the shipping.
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Thanks for the offer but I have the older style transfer case that's all mechanical with a set 40/60 front/rear ratio.
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Good news! I jacked up the X5 earlier today to check for what was causing the grinding, and I immediately saw that the front driveshaft was loose. Looks like it slipped out a bit and started grinding against the transfer case instead of being turned. It threw some grease around as well:
I turned it by hand and I immediately found that it was causing the grinding when I was towing it. The super loud metal on metal grinding while in gear was probably the transfer case grinding against the disconnected driveshaft.
https://vimeo.com/201579934
I then set out to remove the front driveshaft to investigate further. All I had to do was remove the lower reinforcement plate (six 16mm bolts) and that gave me access to the front differential where the driveshaft was attached via a flex disc (guibo). I undid the bolts on that and then I was able to remove the driveshaft. The flex disc looked quite new and the splines on the driveshaft were greased with purple grease so it looks like somebody's serviced it recently, probably when the transmission got rebuilt by the previous owner. Check out how worn the driveshaft splines are:
So it looks like I'll need a new front driveshaft. The splines in the transfer case didn't look bad at all so I think the transfer case is fine. Should I get one of the "improved" front driveshafts that are a half inch longer? I feel like that would help prevent something like this in the future. Any recommended sources for a front driveshaft?
After removing the driveshaft, I thought I could drive the X5 as RWD, and I immediately got happy thoughts of doing smokey burnouts. Once I lowered the X5 back to the ground I found that this would not work. The good news is that there's no more grinding while in gear, the bad news is that the X5 still doesn't move while in gear, even while on the throttle. I assume the transfer case requires a front driveshaft connection (aka resistance) to work correctly?
Just to check if the transfer case was okay otherwise, I jacked up the rear of the X5 and rotated the driveshaft. No grinding and everything rotated just fine, so everything's good with the rear portion of the drivetrain.