QuestionHello again Ted! Once again, thanks for the help. My follow up string got so long the site required a new question. Hope some other frustrated Camry owners get some help from it.
Anyway, I re-drained the tranny and removed the pan. There does NOT appear to be a problem with the parking pawl. The gears are definitely locking up in the "park" position, somewhere. I got out my stethoscope and, after some listening time am relatively certain the "catch" is in the differential.....something is keeping the "punkin" from turning.
You may recall, the first time I put the tranny in the gearing all worked fine. I pushed the car out of the garage, then back in to the garage before removing the engine and tranny a second time, only to discover I had broken the hydraulic pump. Now that I have it back together, this new problem has arisen. I don't see how one could do so, but is it possible I broke something while removing/inserting the drive shafts? Is it common for something to come loose in the differential and jam the gears? I'm just about at wit's end on this one and it's probably headed to the shop for the third go 'round. If the problem is in the "punkin," can a competent shop fix it with relative ease? or am I looking at another complete tranny?
One note you and any readers might find of interest......I believe I found the reason for the original tranny failure. On the inner side pump casting there is a machined surface on which a plastic spacer rides between the pump and the first clutch pack. There is a 90 degree tab on the spacer which is supposed to sit in a recess in the machined ring. It appears there was metal slag in this recess when this pump was machined. When the spacer was put in and the pump installed, the tab must have broken off and been caught under the spacer. This "extra" spacer caused the internals to run atilt from day one, evidently. The bushing inside the center shaft was nearly worn through on one side and the clutch pack carrier had worn the bosses down on one side of the pump housing. I doubt the Toyota folks will send me anything, as I did get 130,000 miles out of the tranny, but I do intend to send the suspect part back to them so they might address the problem in their quality control efforts.
Thanks again,
Scott
AnswerWith the shifter in the park position it locks the ring gear and keeps it from turning, when the wheels are off the ground the wheels can be turned(opposite direction) because of the diferrential gear action, the gears inside the housing can still turn.
