The neverending saga of our Laser. :-P The transfer case was replaced under
the recall, and on the drive home the rear-end felt like it bound up again.
Got back over to the dealership, they said, "Our tranny guy thinks it's
coming from the tranny, you wanna pay us to look?" We politely declined
their gracious offer to look into damaged caused by a recall item on our
dime, and very carefully drove the car home without a recurrance of the
problem. Checked the rear diff (as that would seem to be the obvious
culprit), and it was fine. So, we pulled the center differential; to those
who don't know, this means disassembling the outermost part of the
transmission, although you can do it while it's still on the car. After
pulling it, we found a cool thing: a
Speed Design 4-spider
center diff instead of the stock 2-spider diff we thought we had. It was
also in perfect shape, so after a few screwups on my part, the tranny is
back together, and the car appears to be running perfectly. I'm
speculating that the problem was due to the new transfer case binding up
on burrs or other crap resulting from the machining process, since I
really don't have much else to look into, and the problem isn't popping
up again.