Ford Transfer Case Large.

[Tim Berry]

Hi all. I recently attended the MJCQ swap meet at Canungra Qld. It was a round trip of about 450km's and ten hours on the road. On the way home on the Sunday the ambient outside temp was 35 celcius and you could not touch the road surface. I believe these conditions may have helped my rear left tyre to blow out. It appears to have been a complete side wall failure.
My questions is though, how hot should the transfer case get. After an hour of travelling and changing the tyre, I decided to check the oil level in the case. I could not touch the housing or the filler plug it was that hot. It had plenty of gear oil in it. Is this normal. I am running 80/90 gear hypoid oil. Is it also true these transfer cases only run on two and a half pints of oil, as I think I overfilled mine causing it to leak badly out of the seals.
For those in Australia, where can I get the steel shims from to set bearing pre loads. My transfer case internally was in good order so we cleaned her out and put it all back together as found. One thing I noticed was the lack of shims in general. There may be one of two at most but that is all. Is that normal. I was think bearing preload may be too high causing the high temps but I am no engineer. As I said we assembled her again as found. Any ideas?

Tim