Damage to 5th gear shift pads?

[2.216VTurbo]

Finally getting around to building the 523/OBX set up for my Grandma car

This weekend Pat P. and I (he has all the good Miller Special Trans tools-you da man Pat ) dissasemble the trans and found it to be in really good shape overall for a 175k+ trans, gonna need only bearings/races/shims to make it race worthy.

Often we see the Nylon shift pads for the lower gears damaged or just plain missing, but for whatever reason on this trans they are fine, it's the 5th gear pad that is beat! Like totally 'melted'. You can tell it took a bunch of heat because the nylon is all balled up on the trailing edge. We were trying to speculate how 5th takes such a beating and what we came up with was maybe the original owner of this trans (boneyard piece) rested their hand on the shifter exerting slight pressure for extended periods while the car was in 5th.

Anyone else seen this? Ideas, or wild speculation welcome.

[Frank]

Typically the 523 trannies will melt 5 gear components (not sure which) because the fuild was ran low and doesnt recieve proper "splash" to cool those components. You can thank Cliff Ramsdell for that information.


Frank

[Cliff Ramsdell]

I see this quite a bit and getting more so theses days. This is from running the transmission low on fluid.

5th gear is the last to get fluid and low fluid level makes the problem worse by not having enough fluid to splash onto the feeder for 5th gear and drop onto the 5th gear set.

Burnt pads, damaged 5th gear and the intermediate shaft and seen more and more these days.

Finally getting around to building the 523/OBX set up for my Grandma car

This weekend Pat P. and I (he has all the good Miller Special Trans tools-you da man Pat ) dissasemble the trans and found it to be in really good shape overall for a 175k+ trans, gonna need only bearings/races/shims to make it race worthy.

Often we see the Nylon shift pads for the lower gears damaged or just plain missing, but for whatever reason on this trans they are fine, it's the 5th gear pad that is beat! Like totally 'melted'. You can tell it took a bunch of heat because the nylon is all balled up on the trailing edge. We were trying to speculate how 5th takes such a beating and what we came up with was maybe the original owner of this trans (boneyard piece) rested their hand on the shifter exerting slight pressure for extended periods while the car was in 5th.

Anyone else seen this? Ideas, or wild speculation welcome.

[2.216VTurbo]

Yeah, I was fearing the worst when I saw this trans was run what looks like strait ATF Maybe that's why it was so clean inside?? I shaft is perfect though

Totally makes sense about less oil making it to 5th gear.