V160 Transmission
Repair

By Carey Morris

This page will document my adventures of attempting (so far) to repair my
broken and undrivable 6sp manual transmission. I created this page to allow
people to assist me in that endeavor. Wish me luck and PLEASE HELP.

References

• Toyota
  repair manual info for the v160
• Hyper article on the V161 –
  Nice diagrams of the internal of the v161 which look almost exactly like the
  160 as far as I can tell. I don’t know what the difference is.

The Problem

I was giving a demo ride when suddenly something was VERY
wrong with the tranny. I couldn’t find any gear but 1st and 2nd. Uh oh. All I
could imagine was the big bucks people were paying for new or used 6spds. The
best deal was $2200 from Tap Recycling guaranteed for 6 months. It was off a
93.5 of unknown mileage. At least that was guaranteed. If I
bought a used one from someone, there would be no way to tell if it was good
until I had it on, and that would be way too late.

Oh, and my third gear synchros seems to be having a problem and very high
rpm’s speed shifts. Not good.

When I disassembled the shifter, I found 2 of the 4 bolts that hold on the
plate were stripped out. The other 2 were loose. So maybe that allowed the
shifter to travel too far forward breaking the linkage inside the tranny.

The Plan

I knew Jeff Watson @ Jay Marks Toyota made replacement parts
but I didn’t consider that option at first until I talked with Jeff. He
convinced me to give it a shot. What the hell, the worse I can do is screw up
a tranny that is screwed up anyway. So, with parts from Jeff, I could
theoretically fix this SOB including the 3rd gear synchros. Mohammad convinced
me to take lots of pictures in order to document the steps. Thanks to Bill
Hansen for letting me borrow his digital camera. Hopefully, people who read
this can contribute there input.

I know there may be special tools required for pulling gears so I might
consider just getting the linkage fixed and not worrying about the 3rd gear
synchro. I dunno. I’m also concerned about using the Redline D4 ATF. Could
that have contributed to the problem?

Day 1 – Teardown

While dropping the tranny, I had a nasty surprise
with the striped bolts. I put new ones in thinking that was the problem…but
no. Here is the removed shifter and external linkage to the tranny.

Next was the companion flange. I bought a 32mm socket and a
universal gear puller from Sears. Using my impact wrench, the bolt came off
with no problem. Then I used the gear pulley to pull off the companion flange.
That baby was on there. Pictured are the companion
flange/washers/bolt/lock and they gear puller. Also the output shaft of the
tranny that the companion flange was removed from. Note the seal that is now
accessible. I think toyota wants big bucks to replace this $6 seal. I’ll do it
for less. 🙂

 

Now I placed the tranny on its bell
housing on wood. Good thing I did too. Next, I removed the 10 13mm bolts to
release the upper transmission case marking the exterior bracket positions.
There are 3 main exterior parts, the upper case, the middle case and the bell
housing. I hit the upper casing with a plastic mallet to break the seal and it
removed easily. This exposed half of the internals and I found 2 steel balls
sitting on a couple of the shafts. I was surprised they were still there and
did not fall off.

 

 

Here are a couple of internal
shots of the upper housing.

 

At this point, I took out the magnet
and found (or Brian found) a pin. That certainly would explain whey the
linkage failed if this pin was suppose to be in there somewhere. Note that the
pin is a wound metal sheet…not just a steel pin. What type of pin is this?

 

Now I attempted to removed the middle
casing and gears from the bell housing. I removed the 10 or so bolts but was
unable to get the sections to separate. I could get the sections to separate
by about 1 inch before it would not go further. Here is a pic of the part that
I think was preventing the sections from separating.

Note: I meant to say “can’t really see the slot” on the picture – not
“can”.

 

Here we have a view of the upper gears and the input shift shaft.

 

And finally, some pics of the gears. A work of
art. We can see a couple of synchros in these pics.

 

OK…so how do I get this apart? How do
I get those pins out? What are these pins called? SAVE THE TRANNY!