hey all a little background info before i get into the main issue. my 1997 automatic disco 1 has always “clunked” into reverse and drive( gets worse the longer you drive but then resets after truck has cooled down). have ahad a pretty rough vibration at 60-70 mph that has seemed to progresseveily get worse( everything else on the vehicle is solid). my transfer case is a oil covered mess but never seems to produce more than a drop or two on the ground at any given time. also when letting off and getting on gas at speed she has had a little thud in the drivetrain. want to add my driveshafts are tom woods double cardans and have a few thousand miles on them and the oil was changed on the transfer case a few thousand miles ago and it looked alright.

well today at 60mph im met with a horible clashing noise in the transfer case and a very loud knock or intermittent thud that would come on when getting on the gas. i quickly pulled over expecting a driveshaft failure but everything checked out. i noticed when pulling over that the noise increased and the case chattered when turning. i limped home with very little throttle and was feeling a little ballsy pulling up to my home and floored it to see if the sounds would get worse but to my surprise the truck acted relatively normal. during the drive home the noise was reduced to a “marbles in a can sound” with the occasional clash and thud. t case still locks and goes into low no problem. grabbing the driveshafts i notice that i get almost half a rotation of play in the front shaft but more concerning i can visibly see the output flange move up and down when shaking the driveshaft.

am i screwed for a t case replacement or do you think its just a bad output bearing? also where would be a good place to get a transfer case as finding one for a discovery 1 on ebay is proving tough! thanks for the help!

 

I wouldn't necessarily trust those driveshafts are perfect but first thing I'd do is drain the TC oil and look for metal shavings/chunks.

 

Don't forget the parking brake assembly is down there too and can make some wild noises

 

got around to doing some diag on the transfer case noises and thuds. drove in both fwd and rwd by removing each driveshaft and locking cdl, no difference was made. drained the oil and having changed it only 2 thousand miles ago there was alot more metal shavings on the drain plug magnet than there should be, pulled the yokes off and the output shafts and nothing seemed horribly wrong with those, local salvage has a transfer case with 70k miles, tested and 3 month warranty for $100. will pull my current t case tomorrow and pick up the new one as well. for 100 bucks and a few hours of my time the swap alone is worth the potential fix of all the oil leaks my previous t case had 😂

curious has anyone ever deleted the trans mounted e brake, mine never gets used and i wouldnt mind shedding 30 pounds of rotational mass off my driveline. only problem i can see is filling the gap between the rear output yoke and the driveshaft. figured i could replace the prop shaft bolts with shorter ones or possibly make a spacer. any ideas appreciated!

 

I don't really like the brakes on mine so I kind of like having an EMERGENCY BRAKE, just in case lol.

 

eh overrated brakes only slow u down. on a serious note though i rebuilt my entire break system from the booster, master, ss lines, calipers rotors etc when i bought the truck earlier this year she stops better than my camry lol but my ebrake has never worked to begin with. i can always fred flinstone through the rust hole in my floor pan to stop lol

think ill just purchase a disc conversion for it seems to shed most of the rotational weight off the driveline while retaining emergency stopping power

 

I need to work on mine a bit, pads and rotors are good, and the booster seems to work as it should, but it does stop slower than it should, especially after sitting for a week or more the first few km are a bit of an adventure.

Sure love driving it though !!

The ebrake or parking brake in mine does work very well though. If I have it in low range the brakes do not really do too much though!

Will have to check through a bunch of threads to see what the issue might be.

Hope your transfer case swap goes well! I have a couple spare transfer cases in case of trouble but so far so good .