I drive a 2006 Freightliner Columbia with an Eaton 10 speed tranny. I first started driving this truck in late August, early September. It had 74,000 miles on it at that time. When I first got the truck I noticed a vibration and noise coming up through the gearshift lever. I took it to the shop and they couldn't find any reason for this. I had it checked a second time, maybe a month later (after my husband passed away, he complained about the noise when trying to sleep, not really bad noise, just annoying).

I have driven the truck since October by myself. I have put 58,000 miles on it since driving alone. While in Arizona the noise coming up through the gearshift became very pronounced in 6th gear. After not finding a shop to even look at it for several days I drove back to Missouri with it. The bad vibration and noise were in 6th gear, also there was a rattle when sitting at idle.

The truck went back to the shop last week, transmission was taken out, and it is shot. There are chipped teeth on several gears, mainly on the ones for 1st/6th gear and a bit of damage on 10th. The shop believes this was caused by bad metal, fatigue, stress fractures or the like. Eaton just turned down the claim, saying their trannys don't fail like that, it has to be driver failure. There is one more step my shop can take, to get a rep down there to look at it in person, so it is not all lost.

What I am looking at is possibly losing my job. If they make the driver failure determination that is a definite possibility. I have been driving 7 years and as of yet not torn up anything. I am beyond upset about this, and am trying to see if anyone has ever had anything like this happen to them. I may not be the best driver out there, but I do know how to shift. Or at least I thought I did. The first truck I ever drove, I drove until it had over 800,000 miles on it. Original clutch, motor, tranny. Replaced one U-joint, some sensor and fanclutch. That is it. I would think as a rookie I would be bound to do some damage, but nothing.

Any ideas? Thanks a bunch guys.

anyone at least have an opinion? Come on, you are all not normally this shy.

I dont know anything about transmissions. I would just like to say I'm
sorry for your loss of Anthony(my middle name) :lol: and i hope eveything works out for you. my prayers & best wishes to you....

That right there from the way it sounds like a MANUFACTORING ISSUE and eaton is trying to push it off on the drivers rather than stepping up to the plate. They are saying driver abuse when your late husband was complaing about it from the start also you were doing the same thing which means there is something wrong with the transmission not the way you were driving it. I had a reman rear end put in a truck back in 1997 and I was right away something was wrong with it. My mechanic was like dumb driver does not know anything about trucks. Well when that rear end gear took out the housing and the thru shaft then the front dif he finally learned differently. Turns out the inner bearing was set to tight by a couple thousandths of an inch and it burned the bearing out then the bearing seized at road speed.

Since I was screaming about the rear end since it had been put in all the repairs were paid for by the rebuilder of that rear end to the tune of around 15K since they had to replace they entire housing on the rear one.

10 Speeds, in the circles I run in, are notoriously bad transmissions. I had one in my 97 FLC. It did the very same thing yours did at about 240,000 miles. I put in a 9 Over and haven't had any tranny problems in almost a million miles. Although, my Detroit doesn't really get along with the 9 Over, the tranny is solid. But, the 10 speeds, from everyone I've talked to, arent worth much.

Thank you all for looking here, to maybe help me. Warranty has every so nicely changed their mind. The rep that came out to look at it, made the decision that is was undetermined why it failed, but not drivers fault.
HALLELUJAH is all I can say. It will probably still be a week before I get it back, but at least the problem is solved.

Thanks everyone.

I'm glad they are going to fix the problem. I was going to suggest that one option was to take the broken gears to any small airplane mechanic and they could send it in to have an analysis done called magnaflux. This will show if a metal part is ready to fail or has flaws in it.

Well sorry to tell you this it is there policy to reject first when they send the rep down, if your shop does not stand up to them they will not warranty it, make sure they do. I had to fight them on a transmission that was 6 months old and had 40k miles on it, after 6 months they covered it. Good luck