A833 Can't Downshift / Poor Performance

KosmicKuda said
I'll be the first to admit I know very little but you did NOT mention if you verified bellhousing bore alignment with a dial indicator. Seems to me that if the input shaft is off center, it may be getting enough side loading not allowing it to stop rotating.

I've only rebuilt one 833 and haven't installed it yet, but I'm counting on it working because it's registered for Carlisle.

Very true, I did not test bellhousing bore alignment, but the bellhousing/clutch is the same as it was with the old trans. I did the standard ghetto engineering to confirm the pilot bushing wasn't dragging.

MOPAROFFICIAL said
Chance it's not really rebuilt and the synchro n sliders are junk.

Could be true - this seller has plenty of stuff listed on ebay, and seemed like an honest enough guy, but the countershaft reverse gear being chewed and the 1-2 shift fork showing a bit of abnormal wear has planted seeds of doubt.

As an update to all this, when driving the car, it does feel like the synchro's aren't really grabbing the cones on the gear hard enough to spin up the gear set. You can hear the gears winding up a bit more if you apply some pressure.

Almost all the gear oils I have tried thus far have been the GL5 type (I know now the errors of my ways..). To what margin this is grasping at straws, I'm not sure. I always got a giggle about the "I have a mechanic" type guys anguishing over the minutiae of each type of oil, but in this case GL4 vs GL5 may be the difference maker in the shifting.

I'm going to try finding some GL4 or Redline MTL this weekend.