Gearbox has been repaired
Found the issue to be a mahoosive amount of end float (longitudinal primary shaft movement) due to a worn end float washer. Will explain in pics further down.
Limo diff looked to be ok, no gouges or wear in the plates
Here are 2 end plate washers (or retainer plates, whatever you want to call them.) See the shaft behind them, one of these plates sit over the base of the shaft & holds that bearing hard in its place in the housing - stopping the primary shaft from moving up & down. The washer on the left is damaged, see the huge gouge all the way round it where the bearing has been spinning & worn away? The one on the right is the replacement - I had a spare I took from my old gearbox.
Ignoring the bug that crash landed in the gearbox oil, here's a close up of the damaged retainer. That gouge is almost 30 thou deep (about 0.7mm) which is HUGE in gearbox tolerance terms. Thats how much the primary shaft was a slapping about in the box when running, 0.7 of a mm.
Here another indication of shaft slap, some damaged teeth on the secondary shaft. Caused by the the selector on the primary shaft slapping into it as the shaft moved about. I was able to gently grind the rough edges off & reinstall this gear.
As you can see, I caught it just in time. A couple more weeks of driving around on this box & it would have disintegrated.....
There is a magnetic block in the base of all of these boxes which catches any metal shards, lets just say mine had a decenting coating
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joyrides???!!
