The shaft length clearance is critical on these gears. The Hurth / ZF manual goes into great detail on checking the clearance and shimming it to spec. The shifter slides back and forth on the shaft, and if the shaft moves too, it won't shift properly or could get stuck in gear, etc. As the bearings and end caps wear, the clearance changes.
Unless the bearings themselves have worn in 625hrs (a HIGHLY unlikely scenario) my transmission must have been marginal from the get go. The total thickness of the the clutch and intermediate discs and thrust bearings was 0.17mm. (.0067")
The Ontario distributor said they shimmed the forward clutch pack back into spec. with no further details. If the transmission craps out with wear of .17 mm; first off, that's crap, and secondly; all I can do is hope for another 13yrs.
I will recheck the shifter throw again; but nothing was amiss when I disassembled it, and nothing has changed in the look or feel of shifting.
The only positives in this whole scenario are, I discovered a fair amount of wear in the damper plate, and if the transmission hadn't failed; the damper would have in probably another 3-4 yrs (not a positive for the drivetrain however and it gave me an opportunity to replace cooling hoses, broken HX mounting brackets and coolant. Ahh and I did covered that the starter corner motor mount was broken; more likely a result of the severe vibration in these engines than a cause.
Peter
