Inspecting a Junkyard Tranfer Case

[tac0meat]

Background: I picked up a manual BW1354 for a decent price; it had already been pulled (supposedly from a 1993 Ford Ranger with ~103k miles). It has been mostly drained of fluid, fairly dirty on the outside, but seems to work alright. I can shift it into 2wd, nuetral, 4wd high and 4wd low, spin the input shaft, and the respective output shafts will do what they should do depending on the drive selection.

My question is, is there anything else I should check or do to this thing before bolting it in, aside from cleaning the outside and flushing the old fluid out and putting some decent synthetic in?

I don't really want to tear it down and put it back together, but don't want it to fail me after a few hundred miles either.

Thanks!

 

[4x4junkie]

Pull the rear cover off and just have a look inside, not real hard to do (remove the rear flange, then remove the 10 or however many bolts holding the case together).

Otherwise I would say if it spins smoothly in all gears and there's no metal coming out of it with the fluid, most likely it's fine.

Often there will be a light "knock" sound if you very quickly rotate the rear output back & forth by hand, this is normal.

 

[tac0meat]

Often there will be a light "knock" sound if you very quickly rotate the rear output back & forth by hand, this is normal.

Good to know! I noticed this while scrubbing it down last night and was a little concerned.

I'll crack it open once I get it all cleaned to make sure there is nothing that jumps out as damaged. What fluid was left looked like old ATF but appeared to be clean.

Thanks for the help!