Bad spider gear?

[anman]

Had my car up in the shop for new brake rotors and my friend whose a transmission expert with 100's of rebuilds in his experience checks the amount of play in the transfer case by moving one of the drive wheels back and fourth and listening to the noises. He said that he heard that the spider gears in these cars go, and these are not great and if they go bad, they require a transmission rebuild. He added that it would be a cheap/easy procedure to go in there and replace the spider gears before they blow.

My car has about 110,000 miles, has anybody had this or even heard of this problem? It’s happened to my father’s car but that was a Grand Am.

[BNICOV]

He's no friend!! IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT!!

[A-boy95]

Ok im not trying to spund like an ass, but no 1 our cars dont have transfer cases we have trans-axles, and there is no way you can check the spider gear, the way he did there is way to many components in the way like...the strut,lower ball-joint, A arm bushings tierod ends, he could have heard any of thse make noises. srry dude it looks like your friend wants to make some cash, and this is comming from a tech in training.

[scottydl]

Uhhh, yeah... I don't think anybody but a transmission shop is going to try and convince you to tear apart your transmission before you are experiencing any shifting problems.

[anman]

Well that's what I come to you guys for. Thanks for the info, but the guy doesn't charge me anything and the transmission he rebuilt on my sister's buick and my father's 1 ton chevy are great so he's still a friend lol. We did decide to go into the transmission to replace the filter, everything else was fine.

[scottydl]

Good decision. Sounds like he's a tranny pro and likely knows more about them than all of us combined... but that still sounded a little funny.