HELP!! Dead SV21! Tranny?!

[norcal505]

SO, i may have posted some **** about a camry belonging to my grandparents which was acting up a month ago.
The car is a 1989 Toyota Camry SV21 Autortragic.
I'm a Volvo/Peugeot-Head, and I lack a background in jp cars, or auto-tragic tranny's.
Well, today, the last straw went out.
Apparently, they were driving it through a shopping center, went to park, then reverse and the car stopped moving completley. A LOUD grinding noise started coming.
I had just gotten back from a morning jog, came home, and rushed my ass over to the place where it had died.
Tried moving it, it will not go into any of the gears, just a loud grinding noise.
We're thinking it's the tranny.
Could it be that it needs a/t fluid/flush?
I checked all reciepts back to 97' this afternoon, no signs of this service being done.
Is it possible to fix without a new tranny?
If so, I can go with pops, to the local PNP and pull out a tranny from one of the plentiful cam cam's
This car ONLY has a 85k on the clock, and just got brand new michelins yesterday!
would hate to see a nice 1st owner car go the junkers.
ALL HELP IS WANTED!!

Cheers

-rob.

[Doctor J]

Does it have noise in park or neutral? Or just in every other gear position?
Noise like this indicates hard part failure [shaft/gear] an will not be fixed by flash.
If it is quiet in park, but noisy in gears and cannot move, this can be sign of
a) differential failure
b) stripped input shaft splines
c) broken spring at the park lock [which keeps output shaft partially locked, probably the easiest thing to deal with, that can be fixed without removal of tranny].
one test you can do:
with car in park engine off,
lift the driver’s side front wheel
support the car on the stand
attempt rotate the wheel
if it moves, and grinding noise is heard--
it can indicate differential pinion gear failure which takes place when differential is allowed to run empty.

ALSO; make sure the drive axles are secure in the tranny; when the passenger axle "pops out" due to the snap ring failure ,it can show the similar signs you described
d) busted planetary , which is unlikely due to the mileage.
sorry for been too technical and too general.

[norcal505]

the car has no noise in P or N.
just in the moving gears.
by the way, the car has some work done on the axels recently.
could it be related to that?

could this help narrow it down?
and thanks again for the response.

[Doctor J]

If your car has push-in, not bolt-to-the-flange type axels the passenger side axle can slip out of the differential pinion gear if the snap-ring was not properly seated. In this case when car is in gear and engine accelerated the SPEEDOMETER will indicate some speed.
Other [worse case] could be, if during the axle change the differential had been drained but not refilled.
This can be checked by removing the filler plug [with 17 mm box offset wrench and lot of effort ]
then open the drain plug and let the fluid drain into the pan. If metal chunks are present the tranny has to come out for differntial replacement, however, if the input gear shaft bearing is spun, the tranny's case needs to be replaced.
The filler plug needs to come out, so refilling is possible.
From experience: as long as differential has 1/2 qt of fluid in it, it will not fail if car is used for short trips. [full capacity is 1.6 qt]

[norcal505]

yo, thanks for all the help.
turns out it WAS the pass. side axle.
Coincidentally, we had gotten it fixed at a shop last month.
So, long story short, went to the shop got a refund, new part (they admitted part failiure), got a new one, and my cousin and I fixed the car in the driveway w. our trusty jack.
another cam lives on!

[Doctor J]

If you still have this axle, could you snap some pictures of it???

[Justin727]

Wow that thing must have split up at the joint wow.