Check Ball Gone Wrong

[ekafrikay]

Hey Folks,

I changed out my check balls today, as described here. After putting everything back together, I started her up only to find that the car creeps forward in every gear including park and neutral. Also, the knob won't go into L. I'm hoping I just connected the manual shift lever wrong, not put a check ball in the wrong location, but I wanted to see if anyone else had run into this before I go opening stuff back up.

Thanks,
-eka

[mahleek87]

Just curious,

Was your original problem similar to mine? 1-2 hard shift?

I know your van creeps forward in any gear but did you try driving it and did the hard shift go away?

When you ordered the check balls, did you get the same exact ones that I got?

[ekafrikay]

Hey mahleek87,

Yes, my problem was the hard shift from 1-2, and I actually patterned my repair off of your thread. I ordered the same check balls and everything. I was able to fix the shift problem, turns out I forgot to reconnect the manual shift linkage when I was putting the valve body back in. D'oh! That's what I get for not reading the manual carefully enough. But once I got everything squared away yes, my problems are all gone! The shifts happen smoothly with no harshness at all.

-eka

[mahleek87]

Wow thats nice to hear. Im happy my thread helped but I havent even gotten to this job yet. I was almost thinking about putting the remanufactured transmission in that I bought and I still havent decided if I am going to do that. I have two vans so Im driving my other one now.


A few questions.

How many check balls did you replace and where did you order them from? Were they two kinds of part numbers and different sizes?


Also the check balls that came out of your transmission, How did they look? Were they noticably smaller (shrinked) from wear and tear?

[ekafrikay]

I'll check again when I get home, but I'm pretty sure I only replaced the ones in the upper valve body. I replaced three small rubber ones, two large rubber ones, and a large orange-brown one. I also replaced a spring that had failed, which I think may have been the cause of my problems. I ordered all the parts from OEM Toyota Parts. The shipping was slow, but the prices were decent. The balls I took out didn't look especially damaged although one had a groove on it.

[mahleek87]

Very useful information, thanks for responding.

[mahleek87]

Can you list the part numbers you used including the spring? I wonder if this perhaps is a spring problem now instead of a check ball issue or maybe a combination of both. Regardless Im thinking I might try to fix it myself. How hard was it to remove the valve body, and how did you test to find a failed spring?

[ekafrikay]

The spring was just something I found, it was snapped in half. I didn't want to wait for the OEM one, so I just ran over to the hardware store and picked up a new one. The valve body wasn't super difficult, mostly just time consuming and a lot of time under the van. Lots and lots of dripping ATF everywhere too, like every time I removed a bolt. Paper towels and drip pans are your friends, and make sure you wear something you don't care about cause that stuff's impossible to get out. Make sure you actually make the bracket the manual suggests, it's a lifesaver. Other than that, the manual does a pretty good job explaining everything. The parts I ordered are below:

3543314012		GASKET, VALVE BODY, No.1	1	$10.79
3543414012		GASKET, VALVE BODY, No.2	1	$10.79
3548730010		BALL, CHECK, No.4	2	$3.34
3549522020		BALL (FOR VALVE BODY)	4	$3.04
3549622030		BALL (FOR LOWER VALVE BODY); BALL (FOR UPPER VALVE BODY); BALL, CHECK, No.2	2	$4.10