I was pulling a Jet Ski trailer with a 900 pound plus jet ski down the highway today at 65 mph with the cruise control on, down hill, and the transfer case exploded! Oil went everwhere and black smoke billowed out from under my JK. I thought it was on fire! I immediately hit the brakes, pulled to the side of the road, and jumped out to get my fire exstinguisher. To my dismay, there was no fire but the entire case of the transfer case had cracked in half. I can see the gears inside and shake the entire case!

My first question is do you think my extended warranty will cover this, since this is a highly modified jeep. My bet is the Jeep dealer is going to say no.

My second question is what transfer case should I replace it with. The only one my searches have shown up so far is the atlas transfer case. I see several people on this forum have this. I have seen two speed and four speed?

Can anyone give me some advice? Thanks in advance,
FGuedon

 

Sorry to hear that
Ive hears atlas having trouble with the 4 speed
Good luck

 

Dude that's terrible news but the same thing happened to me a couple of months ago. Believe it or not our dealer did cover it under warranty but afterwards told me had they seen the transmission skid was making contact with our HD Driveshaft he wouldn't have covered it thinking that it was the root cause. That and the fact we have HD DS and because we are running coil overs up front the droop is so much it's causing the DS to make contact with the skid and transfer the impact to the t-case.

However, having had a few friends blow up there t-case I think it's more about two things....first, the metal is sub-grade and weak and second the t-case case has a design flaw. I mention that because there's a radius on the t-case case where mine broke (can see it in the pic below) and the replacement has a solid shelf that ties into the side. Hard to describe but it's there you can see in the second pic below there isn't a radius. So for them to redesign something like that and the cost of the tooling means they know there's an issue.

So the question is why aren't stock t-cases blowing up? Well the two issues IMO are contributing alone aren't enough to cause a failure. What is helping to cause it are the combination of the items list as well as the following:

5.13 gears
35" or larger tires
4" lift or larger
85MPH at time of failure
Some vibration maybe minimal.

Just my oh yeah Altas 2 only because the Atlas 4 isn't available right now.

 

I look at the two photos and I can’t tell a difference between the two. But that doesn’t mean anything I think I’m going blind working on the computer all day. But I did notice your jeep has some sharp wheel and tires.

 

To the OP -> what was your caster set to after the lift was installed?

To sm_rubi -> could you humor me and tell me the same thing?

 

Interesting that it is only happening to the Rubi transfer case. Is it because it is different or only because Rubi's are more heavily modified (IE can run 37's much easier)?

 

It's not a t-case design flaw.

The common denominator in the t-case explosions is lifted, bad pinion angle, aftermarket drive shafts, re-geared, highway speeds. I'll even bet the OP's front drive shaft had a single, regular u-joint at the pinion, and a double cardan at the t-case.

This all adds up to hitting a critical front drive shaft vibration frequency, then KA-BOOM.
And the farther the t-case yoke puts the double cardan from the t-case, the easier it will be to hit that frequency.

This is assuming the t-case hasn't seen a trail impact or bent drive shaft.

 

Pretty sure Ron's onto me here ().

I'm also of the opinion there is no flaw in the New Venture t-case design. They've been around awhile, and companies have been building t-cases and transmissions of aluminum housings forever.

I've always been suspect of higher than spec caster numbers -sought in the name of straight line stability- as the culprit on these failed t-cases; increase caster and it negatively impacts pinion angle (and introduces vibration) as the two are inversely related.

When I added adjustable front control arms, my priority was healthy pinion angle first, "steering quality" second.

Like TeraFlex with his Jeep (see post here) I'm @ 3.0 degrees caster (LESS, not more than factory spec of 4.5 degrees) and my pinion angle is perfect with 3.5" lift.

Yet my Jeep steers and tracks just fine even at 75 mph.

FWIW

 

Just to throw this in the mix, how many were running a double carden withe the adapter for the stock yolk vs changing the yoke out.

 

Were at 7 (not positive I was on level ground) which I know is high but we had only a slight vibration nothing major. I brought up the vibration issues to Mel at ORE when we got our coil overs and he said that we could adjust it but I'd sacrifice flightiness which I wasn't willing to do at the time...boy how things change. I'm brining it back in to have them check caster and pinion angles and adjust when I get my 37's tire installed and for the time being I remove the front DS for long drives.

I agree that they've been around but my suspicion is the metal quality and case design of that radius was due to experience I've had with cast molds and tool cost. You simply don't make changes like the one I believe I'm seeing unless there's a real reason...it's just too cost prohibitive to recoup the tooling cost.

So what I'm trying to say is the metal quality and design weakness make for a situation where there is little margin for error. That margin is closed and exceeded with the following:
gearing, lift and caster issues (vibration). Again it's JMO and I might be totally off in left field but with my t-case blow up I had a chance to take a good look at it since it didn't totally rip apart (the radius broke off) it cracked like an egg so I had a chance to see the differences.