Hey guys.

I've had a whirring noise from my engine for a couple months, symptoms:

The whirring noise is audible during idle with clutch engaged (pedal up),
as soon as I disengage the clutch (pedal down) the whirring goes away.

I thought due to the symptoms it would be the Imput Shaft Bearing, but through more thought and in talking with fellow mechanics, I am not so sure.
I'm thinking it could possibly be the TB, in that when the pressure is put on it (disengaging the clutch) it takes up the play that is making the 'whirring' noise.

In your experience with the Maxima's, which is more likely? If it is just the Throwout Bearing I'm not as concerned about it for now, but an Imput Shaft Bearing does bother me, and I'll have to push the engine pulling to a lot sooner than I would have liked. Any comments/opinions?

Please discuss!


Matt

Ouch man, I'm sorry to break the news to you, but input shaft bearing. Sounds exactly like mine. I assume it whines in all your gears too?

Hi I am new But I am thinking about buying a 97 SE 5 speed fully loaded but i think it may have a similar problem it makes noise when clutch is up and also while driving in gear. It sounds like it may be the input shaft bearing also. Clutch engages great no slippage etc. Was a dealer trade in and the sales guy told me if I got something he can go to the manager with I could prolly get a really good deal on it. My question is input bearing means new transmission correct? If I were to get this car I would prolly have to drive it for a few months until I found a new transmission. Is this something that if I changed the tranny fluid and was easy on it would it last a few months without blowing up? also the gear shifter is kinda loose a sits in the 1-2 left gate wont stand up by itself. Is that the shifter bushing or the transmission?

Thanks

Depends on how loud it is, at idle I couldn't even hear my engine over the racket the transmission was making, I was almost certain my transmission was about to blow up and probably had major damage, thus I bought a new transmission to swap the components out of, but mine wasn't as bad as I thought and it was just the input shaft bearing.

What are the mileages on these cars? Mine was at 173K on the original tranny when I bought it and was making input shaft bearing noise.

Tuner : IPS FTL. Sorry mate ... but you are gonna need to do a rebuild. If it's not whinding up (like a touring car sound) you have some time - who knows how much. TB will make a similar sound, but different symptoms (like clutch problems!). You say .. pulling the engine, did you mean trany? If so engine .. why, what's up?

Accord: If you take it to a shop to get a price on a rebuild, have them knock at least that off the car, or don't buy it. I'll do it for you if you wanna ship it to Springfield, Missouri (65807). To have a shop do it .. you're looking at close to 1,200 - 1,500 or so (depending on what shop / where you are / and if you pull it yourself). I'll do it for $500, you buy the parts and pay shipping. I got my kit (bearings and new seals) for $200 so a total of $700 + shipping to and from might be cheaper, look into it if interested.

Maybe I should go into business rebuilding these damn things! LOL


Cheers!

I think it throwout bearing which is common on manual transmissions,it shouldnt be costly if you know someone to do the job

its the input shaft bearing and it sucks because it is INSIDE the transmission and it needs a rebuilt.

the one I am looking at has 142k on it. and its not that loud can only really notice i from outside the car. And inside while going through the gears you can here a wirrling noise while accelerating. once your at speed it is much quieter its not leaking tranny fluid and theres no play at the cv halfshafts. The only thing is that. and the shifter slop which i thing is the shifter bushing. the reason I like it is its got every option ABS leather sunroof cold weather package and no rust only slight rust on the rad core which is not bad yet. Think i can coat it in por 15 and save it.

its the t/o bearing. it whines like the real TO

yep, as others have said its the input shaft bearing...not the TOB. if you dont want to shell out the dough for a rebuild get an 01 tranny and a nice clutch. as it is it might last you a while. i bought mine with the noise at 164k now i have almost 175 ssooooooo

Just to clear something up, these are classic symptoms of the input shaft bearing, NOT the throwout bearing.

Whining when you are standing on the clutch: Throw out bearing
Whining foot off the clutch in neutral or in gear while driving it: Input shaft bearing

OK here is the TRUE answer.

Noise when the clutch is ENGAGED (IE pedal off the floor).

It is the Input shaft bearing. Think about it. The throw out bearing is ONLY engaged when the clutch pedal is pushed down ( clutch = disengaged). The throwout bearing sits on the clutch fork, therefore is only active when the clutch is disengaged.

The Input shaft bearing spins, whenever the input shaft is moving, it is the first bearing to be spun if youd like to look at it that way.

There is a lot of confusion, TOB noise would be when the clutch pedal is pushed to the floor, input shaft is when the clutch pedal is off the floor.

Damn skippy mate! LOL

Thanks man, the noise is actually pretty quiet right now, only really noticable in drivethru's, and at idle with no cars around, not noticable when driving.
As far as mentioning pulling the engine, I was thinking of just pulling the engine and transaxel all at once, doing the seals and gaskets on the engine, and rebuilding the transmission as necessary.
That was the plan, I guess my next question is,

Should I be looking at doing this much sooner than I was planning? Like I said the noise isn't that bad right now.

Thanks very much for the comments/replies.

Matt

The next thing is that I have minor seeping coming out of the axel output (diff bearings most likely). So what is the best way to approch both these issues 'IPS bearing and Diff bearings'

Are these bearings that can be done without pulling the engine. Do I need to just pull the tranny? And should I be looking at rebuilding it or just doing the bearings.
I am green to this specific job, and this is my daily driver so I can't afford to lose more than a weekend.

Thanks again.

Matt

That is probably just the return spring on the underside of the shifter. It's a bit of a pain to get to but it's not too bad.

No need to pull the engine to rebuild a trans. As for the leak ... yea, probalby diff bearings. Does it sound like something dragging when you are coasting? Sorrta a rolling crunch? Diff bearings! As for the IPS, I waited till mine was really talking, never did leak. You can pick up a bearing / seal kit for around $200 (no syncroz) and that is typicaly what people would call a "rebuild". It's a basic rebuild, but unless you have chipped gears or dog teath, that's all that is needed. In my sig is my write up, and Modena just did his / is doing his rebuild so ... if you need help, PM one of us. Also, it's not a bad idea to have everything you're going to need to do the job, prior to starting the job. (tools, parts, help ... and so on) The longer you let it go, the worse it will get, but if you're going to do a rebuild on the trans, it's up to you on how long to let it go. Some people take their car to a shop if they think they hear a noise, others will let it fall apart and pick up the peices and put it back together.

Thanks much JTZ, I'm pretty picky with the car (noises especially) so most of the noise is very quiet right now, but it's always good to know whats coming up so I can plan a resonable time to do the repairs, PM is my motto~!!!!

i bought mine with this whining noise assuming it was in fact the TOB. after taking a 2000 mile road trip to virginia beach and back it got worse. sounds real gritty in nuetral and trough out the gears. but it now pops outta fourth. wont stay in i dont know. so i came here and sounds like i may need to yank my tranny outta there and start driving the third gen again. i always did prefer beauty over the beast. so thanks for clearing this up for me. what was gonna be an easy fix has now became a nightmare.

What is it about these manual transmissions that cause the bearings to fail? It seems to be an issue that plagues 3rd generations too. Also what is it about a bad input shaft bearing/ diff bearing that actually causes the noise? Is there anything an owner can do to avoid this failure or is it ultimately inevitable due to the nature of the design? It seems like these transmissions are designed to fail.

There are two things I notice about these transmissions. First, the shims on the differential came from the factory always in the same two sizes. After rebuilding I usually end up with a different shim size. So possibility one is that the factory assemblers never set the preload and if your transmission happened to have the right dimensions for the shims, you got lucky. If your transmission components had slightly different tolerances and don't agree with the shims, you get a rebuild every 60-160k.

The second oddity is that the diff bearing is always heavily worn, even if I find the original shim sizes to be close. If the bearing is undersized there are many possible reasons why it's failing prematurely but without the loading data anyone can only guess. I suppose if I felt inclined I could take the final gearset and housings into work, put them on the CMM to reverse engineer the final drive, and back-calculate the bearing life and operating conditions. But that wouldn't solve any problems anyway. The most economical thing to do is replace gear oil more frequently and rebuild it when you begin to see metal flakes. If you're proactive the rebuild is fairly easy and doesn't involve the whole transmission.

David