Yesterday, I finally booked time on my buddy's lift and swapped out the transfer case on my 2004 Land Rover D2 HSE.

The "new" case was also from a '04 with 113K miles on it: mine had 195K and developed some bad behavior/sounds over the past several months.

Followed the RAV step-by-step. Took 10+ hours with one lunch break. A couple of those were spent getting off a bunch of head-srtipped cross member bolts and heavily rusted exhaust bolts, and a couple more hours were spent wrestling the larger 03-04 case out as there is a one inch or so body seam at the rear of the case that some cover bolts would just hang up on and not let the transmission spline clear. Once we had the old cae out, we put two cuts in the body seam about a foot apart and then hammered the seam up with a 3lb sledge to give us enough room to get the "new" case in without damaging the input shaft seal on the transmission output spline.

(BTW, the RAV left out a few steps, like unplugging the neutral warning switch and detaching the fuel lines from the passenger side of the transfer case.)

Having the replacement case with a cut-off harness was invaluable in figuring out where everything went.

On close inspection, the old case was a train wreck, had been off before, was all gooped up with RTV, input shaft seal was mostly gone and what was left of it was hard and brittle.

Anyhow, got it all back together, correctly I believe, and it won't move. I started it up fine, but when I put it in drive it just behaved like it is in neutral, and the first time it went back into park from drive it made a momentary awful sound, but no similar sound in subsequent attempts. And it throws a blinking gear light on the upper left of the dash console. I cannot remove the key (presumably because it thinks it is in neutral and not park?). I did not have an OBDII reader with me so not sure if it threw any codes.

When it went on the lift, the vehicle was in park and the case was set to "high"

The replacement case levers were set (I think) to the following positions:

• the differential lock (the lever at the front of the case -- this is an '04 case) was set to 11 o'clock when looking from the right side of the case, ie., it was pushed toward the front of the case:
• the H-N-L lever, the was set forward at about 11 o'clock as well when looking from the right/driver side of the case. I tried to move this lever by hand without any leverage and it wouldn't move.

The replacement case came with a cut off pigtail of the wiring harness associated with the case plugged in to all the sensors (only the Bank 2 Sensor 2 O2 sensor and one other connector not associated with the transfer case were not connected), and we wired it back the same way, and specially the two differential lock sensors?

Anyone have an idea of what I did wrong and how I correct it?

Theory 1. I am currently going with the differential lock being set to "On/Engaged" and the H-N-L set to "H". As both those levers have position sensors, I am assuming that the combination of a diff lock on and high 4-wheel drive is a state that the transmission control unit doesn't like so it goes into neutral until the state is corrected. I am going to get under the vehicle, disconnect the differential lock cable, move it to the rear (1 o'clock position) manually and see if that works. I have read on this form of people doing that when the cable fails rather than replacing it.

Theory 2: the wiring to either the diff lock sensors, the H-N-L lever or the neutral sensor (not sure what this sensor is or does?) or the sensors themselves are damaged/faulty (though I find that harder to imagine on a relatively low mileage case and how careful we were with the wiring).

Any other theories are most welcome.

 

did you test the replacement T case before install? did it shift hi/low , lock, and and rotate?

might not be the T case...could be transmission....flex plate.......

 

I couldn't move the hi/low lever on either case and didn't want to force it with "leverage" (no pun intended). Both the lever on the case that came of and the lever on the replacement were in the same position: about 7.5-10 degrees toward the front of the case when looking at it from the driver's side.

The diff lock case switched easily enough,and again it moved between 11:00 and 12:30-1:00 o'clock when looking straight down at it. What is "locked" supposed to look like? Both output shafts move in lockstep?

The front and rear output shafts on the replacement case rotated fine and with no play/slack, but I didn't test the input (no spare spline transmission output shaft to test it with).

The case itself seemed to be treated with love and care as it was cleaned, no nicks or gouges in the casing and the input shaft orifice was very well plugged (like it came from the factory).

But now that you mention it, though it was in park, when it was on the lift, I was able to freely rotate each drive shaft (independently?) to bolt them on. Should it be able to do that?

And if the torque/flew plate has disintegrated, would I be getting the blinking yellow gear warning light?

 

A couple of other general questions about the D2 transfer case:

Are the diff lock and hi/low controlled by the same cable system, i.e., when the hi/low lever is on low, the diff lock is engaged and when the hi/low lever is on high, the diff lock is disengaged?

When we dropped the case, we pulled out the breather tube. I recall it going up behind the engine and mounting onto a line holder on the firewall: is this correct? right now I pushed it back up behind the engine but on the right side, really close to/touching the heads. I am pretty sure that is not where it is supposed to be routed. Any advice on properly re-routing it.

FYI, this transmission/transfer case stuff is way harder than pulling and rebuilding the engine.

 

Couple things that might help you out.

Theory #1 is not correct. ---> You can lock CDL on a D2 in either High Range or Low Range.

Re: There are 2 distinct cable systems "Are the diff lock and hi/low controlled by the same cable system, i.e., when the hi/low lever is on low, the diff lock is engaged and when the hi/low lever is on high, the diff lock is disengaged?" ---> Look at this pic of CDL mechanism (they are awful pics in an Ebay listing but you'll get the gist). https://www.ebay.com/itm/40389896606...MAAOSw1DpjK3aI
So, one of the cables controls H-N-L range (front to back), the other (side to side) does the CDL. The reason when you see most CDL mechanisms for sale you only see 1 cable, is that you then reattach your existing H-L-N cable to that new mechanism. So, they don't sell it with both cables. But a 2004 mechanism has 2 cables.

Also - to confirm, you are able to shift your transmission into DRIVE or other gears than park, yes?

My take -- The blinking gear light (it also chimes) usually means that the transfer case is in neutral, right? It sounds to me like perhaps the H-N-L mechanism isn't adjusted right and it popped out of High Range into Neutral (which would be the crunch/clunk you heard, pretty much the normal noise it makes when this happens if you're stationary.

 

Maybe I didn’t read thoroughly enough, but per a number of other threads (and the only time in my own experience), a lot of transmission issues are caused by low voltage (eg poor battery or alternator). The transmission ECU seems to be very sensitive to voltage.

 

it sounds like the case is stuck between lock and unlock. There is an arm inside the case which slides a shaft back and forth. If that arm is bent or dislodged, the case will remain in it's current selection..ie: no gear lock and chiming bell.... or it's the H L selector....but it's the crunch sound that worries me...something broke off in the T case and went into the gears? you can pull the bottom cover or magnetic drain plug and look for metal....

 

Thanks all.

Still don't quite get the selector cable system but the picture of the actual parts help a lot. So you actually have five (5) possible states for the transfer case.

High Unlocked --> High Locked --> Neutral --> Low Unlocked --> Low Locked

Right? If so, then I get how the CDL and HNL act independently to create all these states.

Does anyone have a rule-of-thumb on say how many threads should be visible when each of these is set correctly in say the High-Unlocked state (my default state).

Regarding sound, it was less a crunch/clunk/chunk than a grind/whine/gnash. And it only did it once, the first time I went from park to drive (or maybe it was drive to park). After that I could go P-N-D and back again and again with no gnashing-ish sounds.

I think I've heard that sound the handful of times I've put it in low range without moving (last time was probably 3-4 years ago -- haven't had much use for the low range other than to confirm it works).

So right now, I am going with the HNL lever being in the wrong position.

To be honest, I didn't set up either the CDL or the HNL selector cable. My wife's nephew, who I recruited to help and has surgeons hands, did the cables.

He was having trouble getting the rear (24mm?) lock nut on the HNL selector cable to start, so maybe he pulled the cable back a bit too much and switched it to the neutral position.

Right now my plan is to go back out to my buddy's ranch Wednesday, and disconnect the HNL selector cable from the lever, then manually move the lever to "High". (FYI, when both the old and replacement cases were out, I tried -- but not too hard -- to move it and it wouldn't budget; is this lever hard to move? I recall that the HNL selector in the cabin required pretty solid force to get positive movement/feedback from one state to the next)

I thought I've read before on this forum that this is an OK move the HNL selector lever manually at the case itself if you don't ever need the low range. Am I right?

(FYI, eventually, I'll re-attach the HNL selector cable to the lever and then adjust the cable properly, but I don't want to drop the transfer case again, and it appears the only way to do the cable adjustment in situ is with a 24mm crows foot, so I'll need to buy that new tool first.)

My other other question/concern is with the central differential lock.

I assume that cable system engages the CDL when it is in Low and disengages it when it is in High. Is this correct?

If so, in which lever position is the CDL engaged and which is disengaged? (toward the front out and away from the front output is probably the easiest way someone could explain in a way I could understand which position is which)?

Finally, if I disconnect the HNL cable and manually switch the case to "High", should I disconnect the CDL cable as well and manually shift it to the disengaged position?

My concern with disconnecting the CDL cable from the lever is that unlike the range selector lever, the CDL lever itself moves quite easily, and I am worried that it could pop out of the disengaged position and into an engaged state (which I assume would be bad at say 70mph).

 

You can have CDL engaged in Hi or Lo range.

 

Thanks, finally figured that out from the link to the CDL-HNL all-in-one shifter pics someone sent earlier that the CDL and HNL levers operate independently. Guess there are off-road scenarios where you may want to be in high range with the CDL engaged (in simple terms, CDL locks the front and rear output shafts so all four wheels turn at the same rate, eight?)

I think I have engaged the differential lock once in the 8 years we've owned the D2 and then for like 100 yards just to see if it worked (as I recall, after I did engaged, drove a few hundred feet, then disengaged it, it took some driving before the CDL indicator went out -- there is a CDL idiot light, right?), so I wasn't really familiar with the positions/states of the transfer case. Not a rock crawler at all (not sure how that moniker got tagged to my profile), if I go off-road at all, it is usually on roughly graded dirt roads and glorified goat paths on friends' ranches, certainly nothing "technical".

(There are many, many white LR3/LR4s and whatever models were after that cruising around here in Austin -- almost all enamel white -- and my joke is that the closest any of those LRs has ever gotten to offroad was when they accidently went off the driveway and into the grass; I am a couple of steps on the offroad scale above that).

Again, what should be the position of the CDL lever (toward front or back of the transfer case) when the CDL engaged or disengaged?

And as with the HNL shift selector lever, can I disconnect the cable, set the CDL to disengaged and not have to worry about it slipping back to engaging, i.e., does the cable need to be connected to keep the lever in the correct position?

Going back out to the D2 tomorrow (friend's ranch is about 40 miles away), will report back after my experiments/tests with the levers.