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The carnage! (broken shift and select lever shaft)

11K views 41 replies 13 participants last post by  DesertFox 
#1 ·
My 93 Turbo lost the ability to shift gears a few weeks ago. Tracking down a replacement has proved to be extremely difficult. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves...
 

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#3 ·
Thanks for the info, however, the part is discontinued from Toyota and every parts supplier I've tried has zero available. My buddy works for a local auto shop and has called around to all of his connections for parts supplies and transmission shops. Nada.
 
#6 ·
That's awesome, thank you!
The specific part that is broken (the shaft itself) is 33261-17070, so if anything, that's the part I need. The entire assembly is from a '93 Turbo E153 w/LSD, shown in the attachment, which I would be just fine if I could source the whole thing already assembled. :grin2:

I am stopping by KO Racing this coming weekend to see if they've got anything in one of their spare transmissions so I'll let you know if I have any success there. Definitely don't want to waste your time if I'm able to source locally.
 

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#12 ·
I may have what you need but I'm not 100%. I bought a 91 car that was suppose to have a 93+ LSD transmission. After I got the car up and running, found out the synchros were bad. Took it apart and ordered all the damaged parts for a 93. Turns out it had 91-92 gear set in it with the factory 93 LSD. So, I'm not sure what year the shift shaft is. I ended up buying another transmission.

After looking at the part #s, the 1992 seems to be the same as the 1993 but the 1991 has a different part #. Any way to tell the difference?
 
#13 ·
If you're able to snap a pic of the assembly I should be able to tell if it matches (I've been staring at enough parts diagrams recently...)

In case the shift is still in the transmission here's a link to a graphic for removal.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5mvnssxkr61lo3s/removing shift gear select shaft e153.JPG?dl=0

All the highlighted parts are what I had to unbolt in order to pull the assembly out of the transmission case.

The most difficult part for me was removing the lever lock pin (circled in blue). The nut and washer came off no problem, but I had to heat up the shift lever around the pin with a torch (careful not to melt the rubber gaskets) before I could get the pin out, which involved some wailing with a hammer and punch.
 
#14 ·
If you can obtain that part and get a model of it that would be awesome. I assume at that point a machine/fab shop or as you said a metal 3D printer could make one. This is a little out of my knowledge range, but bringing this to market for owners would be awesome. I thankfully don't have this issue but I've read about it before...
 
#15 ·
That's the main reason why I would put the effort into creating a 3D drafting design of it, to help out other folks who run into this and offer a good (hopefully not overly expensive) solution. I should be able to model it from my existing part, since it was a very clean break. Just going to take a lot of time with a micrometer and CAD...and bugging my buddies who have 3D printers so I can print up prototypes in plastic before I spend the money to print in metal.
 
#17 ·
Would you mind taking a few more photos from different angles? Maybe 45 degrees left and right of the current shot. Trying to see a few of the individual components, because I'm confused about a couple of things in comparison to all of the diagrams I'm looking at from various model years. Thanks!!
 
#19 ·
Back on the 3D printing. Any thoughts on also making gears and synchros to fab? Is that even possible?
Can someone enlighten me as to what is needed? CAD drawings and detailed, preceise measurements of the parts?
Would a 3D printed metal be able to stand up to the forces?
Would a 3D print be able to be that precise on measurements?

Sorry to hi-jack.
 
#22 ·
I have a decent bit of experience in additively manufactured parts.

To answer your questions briefly, no plastics would work for anything in a gearbox other than maybe a speedo drive gear that's already injection molded nylon.

For additve mfg metallic parts, there are starting to be some steels that are being developed which are still reasonably ductile after being printed, but that probably doesn't have the hardness. There are some nickel based superalloys (like Inconel 718, or Haynes 282) that would probably be hard enough for a gear, but you're talking many hundreds of dollars per pound of the machine, and the machines themselves are typically starting around a $1 million and go up from there. That said, you'd still have to post-machine the gear faces, as the surface finish is an order of magnitude worse than what you need for a gear face coming right out of the machine.

At the end of the day, it'd cost way way more than machining a gear via conventional machines, and probably not be as good in at least a few different ways.

3d printing has some interesting usage cases, but conventional subtractive machining is probably going to still be the smart thing to do for the vast majority of parts on a car, especially anything that needs to be metallic.


A 3d printed Inconel 625 turbo manifold sounds pretty sweet to me though...
 
#20 ·
So I sourced a shaft assembly from an open diff E153 from KO Racing this weekend in Portland. It looks like I'll only need a small bit of machining with a lathe to make it match my current part. I'll update this thread if/when I get the work done with (hopefully) very good results. :) The comparison photo shows the one component that needs to be adjusted which is just a small groove for a snap ring that holds the spring seat in place.
@NverEnf: I'm really confused with the part you have because every diagram and part I've looked at, it seems the shaft itself is longer, and the actual lever that bolts into the end of the shaft is at the other end and the "control shaft cover" doesn't have a hole at the end. I attached a couple pics to show what I mean.
@mr2_mike: This is not something I have experience with. I'm only considering going down the route of 3-D printing if I'm not able to fix the problem through more "conventional" means, but it would mean extra effort in drafting, lots of trial and error, and probably finding some folks who are more experienced than me to help answer those kinds of questions. Would be an adventure for sure!
 

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#21 ·
Well, I’ll just go ahead and get it out the way...I’m an idiot. The shift shaft must be leftover from a Solara transmission that I bought a while back. I just remembered having a shift shaft laying around when I saw your post. Sorry, for the confusion. Was just trying to help. Glad to see you have found a replacement!
 
#32 ·
Thanks for the education. :) I'm not a machinest or fabricator, I'm a techy (and a 3D artist in my 'past life') so I think the 3D printing technology is super cool and am enjoying following it as the technology matures, but makes sense that traditional methods still produce a much stronger and more durable part.


one day, though...we'll be printing cars in our garages... :D
 
#33 ·
I have a model of this part, actually.

I needed one a few years ago. You won't find a new one anywhere. Only from donor transmissions

The part is carburized steel, 3d printing it out of any material is not going to match the original. It's carburized mostly for wear resistance on the splines and where it rides on the roller bearing, but the loads it sees are fairly minimal (me thinks)
 
#34 · (Edited)
Update with some more pics and my potential solution...

Behold the only differences between the shafts for the E153 w/LSD and the open diff. Seriously, engineers, come on... would it have been THAT difficult to reuse the same part?! (pic #1. top is the LSD, bottom is open diff)

My hope is, instead of having to machine a new groove to match the LSD part, since that would end up being really close to the existing hole (and causing anxiety of reducing structure integrity of the shaft), I'm going to attempt to build a spacer so the spring seat sits back the 12mm or so to match. (pic #2) The parts aren't in their exact places in this photo because the snap rings are removed, but you get the idea. I found a couple of spacers at Ace Hardware today that match the inside diameter and ALMOST match the outside diameter, so I'm going to attempt to throw it on a lathe to reduce the OD, then cut it to the exact length I need. We'll see how this goes! :surprise:

Update Learned that the differential is not the reason for the differences, it's the year. Apparently it's 93+ vs 92 and older. :clumsy:
 

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#35 ·
Update with some more pics and my potential solution...

Behold the only differences between the shafts for the E153 w/LSD and the open diff. Seriously, engineers, come on... would it have been THAT difficult to reuse the same part?! (pic #1. top is the LSD, bottom is open diff)

My hope is, instead of having to machine a new groove to match the LSD part, since that would end up being really close to the existing hole (and causing anxiety of reducing structure integrity of the shaft), I'm going to attempt to build a spacer so the spring seat sits back the 12mm or so to match. (pic #2) The parts aren't in their exact places in this photo because the snap rings are removed, but you get the idea. I found a couple of spacers at Ace Hardware today that match the inside diameter and ALMOST match the outside diameter, so I'm going to attempt to throw it on a lathe to reduce the OD, then cut it to the exact length I need. We'll see how this goes! :surprise:
The synchros changed in 93. It's not LSD vs non LSD.
 
#40 ·
I finally had time to attempt my solution of building a spacer to make the new shaft work. Basically the difference is only about 9mm where the spring seat sits, so I found a brass/copper sleeve bearing at Ace Hardware and took a lathe to it. The ID was perfect, but the OD was a little large, so I needed to shave off about 5mm of thickness (photo #1, although this is after further lathing and cutting off the actual spacer I built, you get the idea..). After getting the correct thickness, I cut it down to the correct length and dropped it inside the spring seat. (photo #2). You can see that the seats now sit at the same spot in photo #3.

Contrary to #3, though, is the final solution ended up using the shorter spring seat. Originally I used the longer spring seat, however, I didn't account for the reduction in clearance after putting a spacer in, so I used the shorter seat and ended up with a spacer roughly 9mm long. Everything is reassembled and I've done a test fit in the transmission and had my wife hold the clutch pedal while I manually twisted the rod...it seems to be working, but I won't know until I have time to reassemble the rest of the shift linkages and cables. I'll update hopefully tomorrow....and hopefully with good news.

So far total investment has been $40 for the 91/92 shift and select lever assembly, $6 for the sleeve bearing, and ~$30 for replacement gaskets and boots.
 

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#41 ·
Quick update as I was finally able to finish putting everything back in the car today (including new gaskets and boots). 1st-3rd gear shift great, but getting into 4th gear, and sometimes getting from 5th/Reverse back to...well, anything, I encounter some resistance/blocking as if things are not quite lining up properly. So it was a bitter-sweet day. Sweet because of turbo spooling sounds and boost and rumbling exhaust (which beats my DD Honda Fit :D) bitter because the car is back in the garage so I can disassemble the whole thing again and try to figure out what needs to be tweaked. I'm suspecting my spacer may need to be modified - or I may have to go the route of carving a new groove in the shaft to match the original. More updates to come.
 
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