renphilia

Good day everybody. It's been a while since I last visited here. I actually just sent my RX to the workshop to have its steering rack replaced, change of front lower control arms, and possibly have her converted to FWD/2WD by removing the longshaft (I am not sure what it is called in UK or US, but at least that's what it is called here by my mechanic). He mentioned by removing that part, my car would run lighter and faster (was he talking about the lower RPM on high speed ) ? Has anyone here ever done conversion from AWD to FWD before ? any experience with this ?

salimshah

We will ignore the cabin noise on bumps ... as there is no information in the post.

Which year RX?
Disconnecting the drive to the rear .... That will impact the ECU and the consequences are unknown. Not that vehicle will suffer severely, but the brains are no longer able to interpret and act to split power and then monitor the change and then readjust power.
What you gain is the loss to weight and the energy needed to turn the shaft.
What you loose is the ability to transfer power from engine to ll 4 wheels.

Let us know what the short and long term real life affects are.

Salim

CRASHMONK

iTrader: (1)

I've seen this mentioned once or twice and my thought is always the same:

With awd, 3 Total differentials, if the rear prop shaft is removed, won't ALL the engine power be transferred to the REAR output shaft? Considering in effect this is like the rear tires both having zero traction and the front having traction, the middle differential will just freewheel right? I don't actually know but that's how differentials work, unless the middle one is viscous coupled or can lock.

Leave the awd alone, I'm sure there won't be much good to come from removing it. Your rpms will still be higher than a fwd model.

renphilia

It's a 2001. I probably don't need that particular function here since I don't really visit any site or do offroad-ing.

Crashmonk, as what you mentioned, indeed the middle differential will just freewheel as told by my mechanic.He did say that the gearbox need to be locked in order to proceed with this removal, which he doesn't know on how to do it. Right now I am waiting for him to find some guys who could pull this of. I'll be sure to let know the result later on.

trbolvr

Crashmonk is correct. I tried driving our awd rx with the propeller shaft removed (hunting for strange vibration) and the car would barely move. Almost had to push it back into the garage..

renphilia

Hi everyone. Been a while since my last post on this thread. Well anyway today our truck just hit again. My own fault for not changing the front 4wd lubricant/transfer case oil. We drove it until it actually dried out.. and we almost got into accident and our truck skid on the freeway while running.

So anyway, had it towed to our mechanic, refilled the oil on transfer case as well the rear axle, truck's able to run. However, we noticed there are more noise and noticeably higher humming coming from our transfer case. Not sure if it's severely affected but anyway this time round we are gonna to get the long shaft/prop shaft removed.

Or is it possible that replacing the center support bearing would do the trick ? Since when I release my foot on the acceleration pedal, the noise seems to be lower/gone. However it does seems to persist if my speed is 80kmh and above.

Any suggestion ?

carguy07

Where did the oil go? Lots of these cars never get either one changed.

Striker223

What the heck are you doing? Leave it as is or you are going to totally break it and why did the oil level go low?

renphilia

The transfer case is already noisier than ever, and our truck seems to lose power upon accelerating. I depressed it as much as I could and it just wouldn't run fast. The humming noise is really annoying and it gets even noisier at 80kmh above. Sounds like something's underneath going to break if I drive at 100-120kmh. Cabin's vibration is unbearable. We can't leave it as is having all of these symptoms, especially since we do feel for sure the transfer case on our RX300 is almost screwed.

You do know for sure that to replace the center support bearing, we do need to remove the prop shaft to get the job done. And anyway, previously I didn't really want to keep the AWD system anymore, that's why I didn't refill the transfer case with gear oil anymore. Never did I know that this could led to disaster for our truck and now I regret what I've done.

So yeah, here I am asking..should I get the transfer case replaced ? Or we can try to remove the prop shaft and probably replace just the center support bearing and give it a run ? Replacing the transfer case is gonna cost a grand for us, so we'll probably align with replacing the center support bearing. Any other ideas from experts/experienced fellas ?

carguy07

So you drained the transfer case and drove it around dry? I'm not sure what you're saying?

renphilia

My last fluid change of the transfer case was around May last year. Afterwards, had been running for 15-20K kms without changing. It's all because I had no intention on keeping the AWD system anymore. Though I wasn't expecting it would cause the rear wheels to skid/vibrate while runing

carguy07

20k kms would be totally fine... so what's the issue???

renphilia

I don't think you get what I meant..
There is a noticeably louder humming noise coming from the transfer case..and the vehicle losing power as well. This time, the noise is much much louder plus very bad vibratiin.if my speed is 80kmh above, I feel like something's underneath the car gonna break.

That's why I thought the transfer case is at the end of its lifespan..or could be just some parts in the transfer case needed to be replaced ?

Margate330

I don't know much about AWD but here is a pic.

Striker223

You need to replace it, you can't just remove the rear shaft and you will need many different parts to properly turn it into FWD