Ok my 2003 evo has 14,000 and has never made a single noise from the tc yet. But the word on the street its its $300 if your tc is good to have it setup via tre or shep. or $2200 to have it done once its bad. And honestly this is hapening to so many people now. So could anyone chime in, am i right with this.

 

If its not making any noise and has been OK so far, I would definitely leave it alone. I see where your coming from but I still wouldnt fix it.. unless broken.

 

If you can deal with the car being down and the $$$ go for it. 300 seems pretty low.. I would assuming shipping alone would be pretty expensive. I've thought about it but I'm at 50K miles now with 0 problems... I'll probably wait until it blows up.

 

Damian,

Im having the same issue right now. Nothing is wrong with my T-case right now but if something does go wrong I will definitely be out of luck. To me 300 dollars is just a drop in the bucket compared to 2300. Shipping would be a bear on that though. Luckily I have my little civic beater to drive around for down time. you still go that old Escort?

 

Where do you get $300? Unless you take it out yourself, you are looking at $5-600 in labor, fluids $50 - $75, Shipping $150, and your car will be down for a week minimum.

That's over $1000, or over $500 if you do it yourself.

And of course you always have to worry about buttoning it up right afterward.

 

It doesn't take a lot of fluid so $75 is definitely overkill on the fluid side. It's actually very easy to remove, so if your mechanically inclined at all I'd say pull it yourself.

 

My tranny just started whining... I'm yanking it out and sending it in to Jon at TRE for the works. I'm sending the transfer case in also just for good measure (and some forged stuff too ). Like I just said in another thread... whatever lets YOU sleep well at night.

 

300.... If you saw my post from the shipping to Shep thats wrong for you. Mine is 300 for the LSD and the larger bolts used in it. It is about 1300 to build the 03s and put the lsd in it.

fluids you can get for about 40 bucks, labor... stop being lazy guys.... It took 3 hours on a lift with 3 people who never ripped out the tranny and tcase out of an Evo, 2 mechanics and one backyard diyer (me) on a lift, and an occassional look at the great EvoMoto writeup.

 

Well the 300 dollars is just to upgrade your open front diff with stronger spider gears. If you break your open diff or replace it now, it will cost the same to upgrade the spider gears regardless. If you want to replace it with limited slip it is more expensive.

Now if you break your ring and pinion gear that is a different story. That is when it gets expensive.

If you send it in now, when then ring and pinion are fine. I think (not sure) Jon@TRE can make it stronger and it wouldnt cost you all that much.

And yes pulling out the trans and t-case isnt near as hard as people make it out to be.

 

Team Rip just told me it would cost a lot more then 1680 to do my tranny and tcase but has not gotten back to me on a price.

 

At 31,000 miles I'm one of the lucky '03 owners with zero problems. But I know where your coming from, I've thought about sending mine off several times just for the piece of mind. I say go for it if you have the extra cash. Too many '03 tc crapping out horror stories. That's my 2cents

 

This sounds like the decision the DSMers were left with on the center diff. Spend 400 on a 4 spider unit up front, or wait till it breaks costing you another ~300 on the diff, and thousands for the tranny rebuild after the spider gear pieces make thier way through the tranny.

I agree with Zeus, if it makes you feel better and could save you money in the end it's probably worth the effort for you.

 

Yeah I blew two tcases in my 03

 

well labor is not an issue I can have it out in around an hour myself, very easy job and I have another ride. But i swear i seen on there site that it was like 300bones to get it setup to there specs and this would increase the life vs the stock specs. I drag race the car once a month maybe 9 runs a month total. I would just hate for it to go bad by its self and have to eat the 2200buck cost. I am not worried about down time. HEy tusudo the escort is in a junk yard in minot ND it ran for untill finall all the gears were gone. We went out there a year after it hit the yard, we jumped it and it still ran. The trunk still has the parts to Torr's blown up civic si tranny in it, LOL. Quick story for evo peeps. I went to a pawn shop spent $540 and got a super nintendo, mortal kombat 2, killer instinct and a 88 ford escort. The escort lasted 5 years and never broke down. And that was after offroading, and beating the crap out of it. ok back to tc stuff. Yeah if its not broke dont fix it, but to me i think it will break, I mean to many people are having issues for me to get lucky. And when it does break the whole if its not broke saying will be kicking me in the but. Let talk some more here guys, maybe tre and shep could help us out, with some reasoning on this. Also if its the ring and pinion that go out then how come these parts cant be sourced. Im millitary and we can get parts for any millspec special truck even if there was only 100 made and it was 10 years ago. There has to be a conection somewhere to these parts. I guess its the cost that makes me mad, I mean you can almost get complete honda engine swaps for the price of a tc, just does not make sense. I have had one apart and there not complicated at all. For that price i would be expecting a magic little box in there. I just purchased a new complete rear end for a bobtail (f15 tow tractor), with LSD for $1500 at work. I wonder if there would be any market in pulling a tc aprt and sending the ring and pinion to dana, or rockwell and see what the cost would be to start having them made.

heres where i got the 300 from

ShepTrans.com EVO TCASE - Stage 1


We can replace your broken spider gears with heavy duty replacements. We also upgrade the cross shaft retaining pin to a 5mm pin We also reshim the frt diff and replace all seals

Stage 1 Includes the Following:
Replace spider gears with heavy duty treated gears
New seals
Reshimming

Stage 1 Options:
Add $200 for REM/Cryo


Price: $350.00 - plus $50 shipping and insurance

 

To rebuild a working X-fer from TRE IS only about $300 plus shipping including the upgraded spider gears (no LSD). It's when something is broken/worn that it adds up quick!

damianhindley,

If you could get those parts made, you would probably pick up Shep/TRE as customers of yours. Problem is, that those parts CAN be made fairly inexpensively, however that is by mass manufacturing that would require large orders.