PA_JERO's diesel pickup would eat KM145's like crazy on road with 30" tires and that's going easy on the thing, they just couldn't take the torque of the 2.3L engine. I'm suprised you haven't already replaced your 5spd, usually just putting it in 4lo is too much for those things.
The torque specs for the 2.3 Diesel it does not look out of line with what the tranny should be able to handle, assuming it's in good shape.
As Eddy pointed out there are a few failure points that can get and should get fixed on a rebuild. There were versions of the tranny that had needle bearings on the countershaft and some really strange gearing. Not sure if it was labeled KM145 but it was the same family. My experiance with that version was that it was a lot weaker.
With a good input bearing (there was a sealed version), thrust plate thats the updated design and a fresh build the unit should hold up. Unless you tow in OD with a turbo and 33" or larger tires.
My belief is that most of the bearing failures are from metal in the oil combined with loading. When a tranny is new it's going to shed some metal as the gear teeth break in. Some of that ends up brineling the bearings and greatly shortening their life.
On a rebuild since most of the gears will have been run in and you will get a lot less metal the tranny should last a lot longer, assuming it was done right.
What happened to mine was when the thrust plate pounded out it let the main shaft move back wards enough so the the shifter forks were always rubbing. That put more metal in the tranny and caused the OD gear to sieze on the main shaft as well as trashed just about every bearing in the unit and all the shifter forks.
The thrust plate also holds the counter shaft bearing in place. Since they were tapered roller bearings a little bit of pound out let the gears really open up. That made for a very noisy unit.
By the time I rebuilt my tranny it was pretty trashed. The root casue was a defective thrust plate. The dealer carries a new version and there was a TSB on it.
Bottom line? Properly rebuilt its a decent unit in the first 4 gears. Towing in OD with a turbo motor can be a bad thing. Shot-pein the roots of the teeth on the OD gears if your doing a rebuild.
Watch your shifter when you get on and off the throttle. If its moving the main shaft thrust plate is starting to pound out.
All transmission cases flex to some extent, same thing with gears. ITs just a matter of amount. The less that a case flexes the better alligned the gears and the bearings stay. About 15 years ago I read a study on gear boxes that showed how replacing gaskets with adhesive sealers reduced how much the cases flexed since it reduced or prevented the flanges from sliding with respect to each other.
The differance in life expectancy and warrenty claims was signifigant. Based on that I made a billet pan from my KM 145 and used Loctite 318 for a sealer.
Later on I found out that the Starion trannies came with a cast pan. I liked mine better since it held about a 1/2 qt more lube.
Very curious to learn more about Pajero's transmission faliures. I'm guessing that there is something else about that setup that caused problems.
Kevin
