IH 444 stuck in reverse

I've been working on my Dad's IH 444 s/n 04645 (1968) tractor.


I've been working on some loader issue, but another maybe even bigger looming issue is the tractor is stuck in reverse. Now, when he told me this I assumed the shifter lever was actually stuck in reverse and would not come out. In actuality, I can move the shift lever to all the gears except first and reverse, I can't get the shift lever to gate over to those two gears.

When the tractor is running, with the shifter in neutral, the tractor goes in reverse. If you move the shifter to any other gear and let out the clutch, the tractor stalls.

Unfortunately, it looks like he ran the tractor low on trans oil for I don't know how long, he kept adding oil to the rear lift reservoir thinking it was for the entire trans.

I have read that the trans & rear diff take 8 gallons of oil, he only got about 2 gallons out of it. It could have been running 5-6 gallons low for many years...

What could the damage be like inside? We're going to take the trans cover off next week to see what's going on, but I guess I expect to see some serious damage.


Anyone have this stuck in reverse issue before?

The reason it will not go into the first reverse portion of the pattern is that the tip of the lever (inside the trans top) has gotten past the first reverse
rail, and that rail is in reverse. Three rails are responsible for moving the gears in and out of mesh using "forks" in grooves to push them. These raails have
a groove across the top of them that, when in neutral, are aligned so the tip of the lever can move from side to side. The one that is out of alignment must be
pulled back manually using a screw driver or small pry bar. I do not know that transmission top, but the lever is removed and using a light you can look in the
hole and see that which I described. To keep it from happening again, the tip can be welded up and reground to its original size so it cannot get out of the
slots. Jim

Hi, I doubt that your Dad caused any problem in the transmission. Those IH Bradford build tractors are one tough tractor and
take a lot of abuse. Had one neighbour that had a B-250 Diesel and he ran either at idle or WOT and you could hear that thing
roaring for a mile. Another neighbour had a 434 and he was even worse he would rarely ever change the crankcase oil and he
probably never ever changed any other fluids and he ran that tractor every day.

Re your trans stuck in Rev, like the other Jim says lever has jumped out of shift rail.
It is a pain to lift trans cover as you have to remove the hydraulic valve mechanism at front of seat.
Try as Jim suggested removing shift lever.

See parts at link below.
JimB
444 Shift Rails

i have had this to happen with c farmall. i jack up one of the rear wheels, before i try to move the slide. rock the wheel a bit, and this takes the
pressure off of the tranny. makes moving the slide much easier.

(quoted from post at 17:46:15 10/30/16) i have had this to happen with c farmall. i jack up one of the rear wheels, before i try to move the slide. rock the wheel a bit, and this takes the
pressure off of the tranny. makes moving the slide much easier.

Click to expand...

Thank you for that tip, I will give that a try!

Ok, so I got the shifter out today. The end of the shifter and the pins all looked fine to me, here is a pic: http://imgur.com/SVlFQfK

The 1st-reverse fork was definitely out of position, so I moved it into place. I put the shifter back in, and after shifting in and out of 1st gear, the fork was out of position again immediately.

I noticed the fork moved way too easily. It seems to me like we lost the detent spring and ball. So now the shifter plate has to come off the top of the trans...

My question is, what would cause the loss of the 1st-reverse fork detent? Did something break?

does 1st and rev. shift easier than the others?

Oh yeah, I can tell the detent is not there. The fork moves so freely that there is no way to keep the notches inline when you come out of 1st or reverse.

We had same problem with our 434 back in the late 1980s but with 2nd gear and the detent spring was broken.
It would jump out of 2nd gear going down a hill. We were going to fix it but Dad decided to trade it on a 384 with PS.

JimB

Broken detent spring or cracked detent ball both happen. A good hardware store spring can be used make sure it can compress
enough when in place. Good luck, Jim

I found the culprit: http://imgur.com/Zn1DR7t

Going to replace all the springs while I have it apart.