The other glaring problem is bearings….or the lack thereof. We picked up a full bearing kit for this truck from Fast Eddy. Our initial thought was we would not only need bearings for the transmission, but for all four wheels as well. To our surprise, the transmission not only has bearings, but also metal gears. On a kit this cheap that’s amazing to me. Where it lacks bearings is in the wheels up front, and the rear axle carriers. On all four corners it is a plastic bushing in rather than a bearing.

We tore apart the transmission to find metal gears, but not much grease.

Fast Eddy bearings are a definite improvement over stock, so when we found the transmission had bearings from the factory, we replaced them anyway. Here we have the new bearings in both sides of the transmission case, as well as the idler gear.

We put the gears back in, and threw some grease on them.

Now we can reinstall the transmission on the chassis.