Zoom, Whirr, Ca-CHUNK

[Serious Johnson]

Hey y'all:

I've twiddled a lot of wrenches in my day, but have assiduously avoided messing with slushboxes because well, they're just silly in my arrogant opinion. I don't give my '83 Wag anywhere near the attention it deserves -- hell, I'm barely able to give it what it DEMANDS.

Anyway, recently she started occasionally doing the little dance described in the subject line when cruising at very light throttle on flat pavement in top gear. It feels as if something in the drivetrain (727/229) completely lets loose for an instant, then catches hard.

She's currently running in full-time 4 with the vac motor hosed directly to the manifold until I can come up with the proper stuff that the PO ripped off. The u-joints feel good, bands are set right (or at least were when I did them about 7k back), Redline synthetic in tranny & x-fer (levels good) at that time also. Back then, the old x-fer oil was full of metal sludge and minor chunks, but this issue is new. Tranny works pretty much right, other than a bit of reluctance to pull from a cold start.

So, cheap & simple fix, or go ahead and bite the bullet for a manual swap (which is what I really want, but can't quite afford)?

Thanks in advance.

:-

[FSJ Thing]

Just as a diagnostic for time being, switch it to 2WD for a while and see how that works, this will let you know if it's the tranny or the Tcase. But if yuh wanna go manual with a 208, go for it, look on ebay, paruse the junk yards, somebody somewhere has what you need and just wants to git rid of it cheap!