Weird issue with slight grind.

[Kirsch95MTX]

Ive been reading around the search and have actually posted a couple times already about the tranny in my 95 mtx. I had a grinding issue, all gears. I just had a new clutch put in and the shop discovered the tranny was fluidless. I dont know how long the PO had been driving the car around without fluid, he told me he parked it once it started grinding. Now there is a new clutch and fluid in the tranny. The car drives fine just barely grinds at the end of the 1-2, 2-3, and 3-4 shifts. The higher the gear the quieter the grind and there insnt any grind going into 5th. Also when i say grind it doesnt really grind just kinda zips at the end of the shifts. Does this sound like synchros or blocking rings? Could it possibly be a clutch cable or linkage issue? Also noteworthy when i pull the car to high rpms in any gear and quickly depress the clutch pedal it feels like the bottom falls out of the pedal, there is no feel or resistance whatsover. Does this sound familiar to anyone? I just cant help but scratch my head. The tranny shop wasnt much of a help in diagnosing any problems either.

I figure it wont hurt to change the fluid to syncromesh since im sure the shop just used cheap crap. Is there anything else i can do? Ill double check the cable even though the shop said it was good too. Im not ready to rebuild so if it is the syncros or blocking rings can i get a little but of mileage out of it if i put good fluid in the tranny?

 

[SHOtimer]

...make sure the shop didn't fill your tranny with gear oil. It is supposed to have ATF in it.

....the fact that it had no fluid in it, and you don't know how long it had been driven with no fluid leads me to believe that the internals of your tranny have some pretty significant damage to them...and that the grinding will now be a permanent atribute of your tranny.

Doug

 

[rubydist]

There are several items inside the trans that are very unhappy if they don't have ****: the bearings, the gears themselves, and the synchro/blocking rings.

The synchros pretty much only have load during the shifting process, but they will wear much more quickly without **** (and they wear quickly anyway).

The gears need **** because the teeth slide against each other at engagement/disengagement as they turn. When this happens w/o ****, the gear teeth can be eroded such that the surface hardness breaks down and small (or not so small) pits are created on the teeth. After this happens, the gears will make additional noise under load.

The bearings need **** for a similar reason to the gears, except that once the balls or races get pits on them, they generally don't last very long.

From your description, I'm going to speculate that there is gear damage. If so, there is a reasonable likelihood that you will be able to drive it for quite a while before it really fails, assuming you can live with the noise.

And, yes, a good synthetic atf will probably be an improvement in the **** department. Do a search - a number of guys have posted which brand of atf they like best in the trans but I don't recall what the consensus was off the top of my head.

 

[Ashley_MTX]

This may be silly to point out but- you don't say anything about making sure the transmission isn't leaking.

 

[Kirsch95MTX]

Ive checked a few times, its not leaking that i can see. It looked like someone had taken it out, split the case open, put it back together and then never filled it with fluid. Im draining it again tomorrow and putting in the syncromesh i just picked up. Hopefully 3 quarts comes out. Then maybe the syncromesh will help a little. Inevitably im aware that somewhere down the line im probably going to need a new trans or a rebuild but i just bought the car and im trying to drive it some. Im just hoping the noise isnt something that will get worse, if i have to live with a tiny bit of grind i can deal with that.

 

[rubydist]

You will not get 3 quarts out unless you do the drain plug modification as described on shotimes.com. Otherwise, you'll be lucky to get half of that out.

 

[Kirsch95MTX]

Im going to do the shop vac sucker method first. If i dont get a decent amount over 2 quarts out ill do the drainplug mod. I dont trust whatever the shop probably put in there and want to get out as much as possible but dont really want to go through the hassle of adding the drain plug. I will if i have to though...

 

[itwonder]

Trying to suck fluid out with a vacuum cleaner is a lot more hastle than installing the drain plug. The drain plug mod takes all of 30 minutes to do once you have the plug, tap, and drill ready to go..

 

[ViPER1313]

I was always able to get very close to 3 quarts out using a vacuum pump You just have to angle the hose into the transmission correctly.

 

[Ashley_MTX]

When we did mine (and yes the fancy tools were used) there was somewhere around 1 qt or maybe a little less left. No, we did not do any drain plug mods.

 

[randy'sho]

yeah I am going to do mine this weekend! hope it all goes well!