ZF transmission casing removable??

[E30s50dude]

I know this is a shot in the dark but I'd thought I was here.

I was doing detents pins on my spare ZF320 trans the other day and the reverse detent sleeve dropped into the trans housing, and I'm having a hard time fishing it out at the moment. I'm now thinking it'll be best to separate the trans casing at this time. I was wondering if anyone has separated the trans casing successfully before with a known good method to do so.

[pbonsalb]

I tried once just for fun on a broken trans and gave up. I found very little information on the process but think someone on bmw forum posted some information within the past year.

https://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/s...-on-ZF-5-speed

https://www.r3vlimited.com/board/for...y-and-assembly

[vaderTT76]

Corey Ellis on the Boosted e36 world FB page has done it and has a write up on what tools are needed to separate and rebuild zf310/320s.

[E30s50dude]

[QUOTE=pbonsalb;30868379]I tried once just for fun on a broken trans and gave up. I found very little information on the process but think someone on bmw forum posted some information within the past year.


Thanks for the links I'll check them out and see if I can make progress on it this weekend. I also saw one thread, but I couldn't see any detailed pics and wasn't sure if bumping an older thread would give me a response.

[XnWarden]

I have the ZF service manual for rebuilding the 310 and 320 trans floating around somewhere. It's about 130 pages long. You have to mount the trans onto a special jig that is NLA in order to hold it while you unbolt the case halves. Once unbolted, they separate like a centimeter in order to fit a center punch down into one particular spot to knock out some kind of dowel pin that holds the case together.
After the casing is separated, the gear shaft assemblies will fall out and go everywhere. The service manual recommends using a leather belt to wrap around the guts and hold everything together before separating the case all the way. Reinstalling everything is very specific in the order that needs to be followed, and there is bearing preload to consider as well.

I also tried fooling around with these trans and I gave up. Dan at diffsonline knows a lot about them, but he is far too busy to answer questions for free. There's a reason rebuilding these things costs $4-5k.

Sent from my Pixel 7 Pro using Tapatalk

[bluptgm3]

I have the ZF service manual for rebuilding the 310 and 320 trans floating around somewhere. It's about 130 pages long. You have to mount the trans onto a special jig that is NLA in order to hold it while you unbolt the case halves.

Sent from my Pixel 7 Pro using Tapatalk

Do you have the manual in PDF format?

[JimsR]

Years back I had a junk zf I wanted to take the gears out to make sculptures. I couldn't get the case apart no mater what, even went at it with a grider.

[vilran]

I have zf whitch is stuck to reverse. If you put for example 1st gear in you cant turn input shaft. And when in neutral it spins backwards. Any ideas what is wrong with the box and how to fix it.

[luisjariel.rodz]

Hey, I just had the same problem today, did you figure out how to take out the sleeve?


Please HELP

[E30s50dude]

I ended up getting lucky and using a lot of spare ATF inside the transmission and basically flushing out the small bits of the sleeve. Pretty sure there's still some material in there but I'm not too worried about it just sucks I couldn't take apart the casing to thoroughly clean it out all but oh well.

- - - Updated - - -

If not the detents
being messed up I would think one of the shift fork levers could be bent.