Blocking Ring Wear Limit ??

[rubydist]

My 92 shifts like crap, and I have a couple spare transmissions laying about. So I am looking inside spare trans #1 to see what condition its in.

There is noticeable wear on the gears, on the load side where they mesh, this is most prevalent in the 4th gear set. My expectation is that will reduce the load carrying capacity and likely cause it to be a little noisier, but otherwise not a huge deal.

My question is related to the blocking rings - since I've never seen this trans in a car, I had no idea if it would shift decent or not. As you might expect, the 1st gear blocking ring shows the most wear and its less as you work up the gears. Even on the 1st gear blocking ring, I can still see the relief cuts in the fiber material in both directions. Is that likely to still shift well? Since these things are now about as valuable as gold, I don't want to replace them unnecessarily, but I certainly don't want to replace my current poor-shifting trans with another that doesn't shift right, either.

You trans experts - how much wear on the blocking rings before they don't want to shift w/o grinding?

 

[AREA 91]

Look at the fiber lining. Is it brown or black? Are there any chunks or flaking present?
How do the teeth look where they enguage?
Are they pointy or rounded off?

Brown good, black bad. Chunking or flaking is bad.

Rounded off teeth is bad.

 

[rubydist]

fiber lining is very dark brown in all cases, no chunks missing nor any metal pieces embedded. the teeth are all quite pointy (although not as pointy as the teeth on the killer rabbit in Monty Python, but I digress)

are new bearings available?

 

[shoon]

There should be a slight gap between the synchro ring and the gear if you place it on the gear. Inspect the synchro hubs! (the things the shift forks slide into) If there are burrs on the hubs as a result of bad synchros / poor clutchless shifting they will grind and cause burrs which make it difficult for the hub to smoothly slide into gear.

Good amount of gap:


Burred hub:


good synchro:

 

[rubydist]

thank you - that helps a lot. my blocking rings and syncro hubs look better than those in the photos, so I guess I'm good to go with this one.