After reading all 48 pages of this forum and studying, I believe I have an explanation for my noises from post #937. I originally had a few circumstances where it was decelerating and ended up in neutral. I didn't think much about it, but there was a reference to shift linking here in this thread. I adjusted my shift linkage to position the shifter lever up close to the bracket stop which on the stock levers keep you from going into 2WD Low. (I had first removed this stop because I wanted the use of Low range 2WD.). When it popped out of gear, I thought this might contribute to the issues and decided to weld the stop back in and adjust the lever to be close to the stop.
What was happening was the transfer was trying to pop out of gear on deceleration but because I had the linkage adjusted close to the lever stop, the lever prevented full movement into neutral. The HI/LO sleeve was just starting riding on the ends of the dog-tooth which created my gear noise. Bottom line, on deceleration I had the famous pop out of gear issue.
I've since replaced the output shaft with a new one and I also replaced the HI/LO clutch sleeve.
I have .010 clearance at the high speed gear and a tight .008 at the low speed gear with everything bolted together and properly torqued. I have 15lbs of bearing pre-load measured with a beam-type torque wrench on the output shaft nut at the speedo housing which tracks with the AA instructions of 10-20lbs.
Unless someone thinks I need to do something else, I think it's time for re-assembly and hoping I'm not one of those units that just pops out of gear.
I've also posted here what appears to be the lastest rendition of the AA shift fork. It now has wear artificial material to eliminate the old metal-to-metal surface rub. I'm not sure if that means it will wear better or just wear and not introduce metal into the oil. I have .025 + clearance with the HI/LO sleeve which I think it a bit much but I see no way to reduce this and these are all new parts.
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