Just got the call from the shop. TC oil changed. No metal shavings or signs of pending doom, so we'll drive it a bit and see how it does...

*fingers crossed*

Did they reset the adaptations? (they need to)

^ They did. I had about 10 extra minutes after picking it up before I had to be at the meeting I'm in now. ;)

They changed out the fluid. The fluid that came out was dirty and black, but no metal shavings or sand or buttons or paperclips, so that's good.

So far, so good. They had just had it out with no shake. I went for another 10 minutes, right at the sweet spot where it would usually start happening. Everything was up to temp. No shake so far. Shifting and acceleration in general is MUCH smoother.

I don't want to jinx anything, but I'm going to be hopeful.

Just got home. Drove it for about 45 minutes after work, definitely had it up in the temperature zone - yesterday it would've been shaking like mad after 15 minutes.

There was still a slight vibration there, but nowhere near as significant as yesterday. I'm pretty happy right now. Yes, it's still there, but at least I feel like we're on the right track.

I'm also going to drive it for a bit and see what happens. Perhaps my shake will go the way of X5only's noise and work itself out after changing the transfer case oil.

It sure would be nice if that were the case. I'll probably give it a couple weeks, if it doesn't get any worse/improves I may go ahead and do a transmission service too. I've been putting that off to allocate funds to fixing this problem, but if it seems that I may not need to replace the transfer case, I may go ahead and do the transmission.

So far, $175 for the oil change (fluid and about an hour and a half of labor to change it, reset the adaptations and a drive test) is much better than $4K.

I had highly doubted you needed transfer case replacement. glad to hear it seems to be mostly fixed!

Here's to hoping. I can't stress enough the substantial improvement.

:boogie:

And you used OE fluid, right? (I forget if you mentioned this earlier)

Yes, that's why we weren't able to do it last week. Had to wait for it to arrive.

Hate to be a nay sayer, but hard to believe a fluid change fixes an issue like this without some underlying defect or problem.... I mean nice to fix it and all...but lets hope the increased viscosity isn't just masking something for the time being.

It very well could be, but I'm just glad to know that we seem to be on the right track. Lots of guessing and trying and failing to fix it over the past few months, so I'm glad we seem to be heading down the right path.