Hey guys, my less then one year old 6spd tranny which I bought from Dave B. is starting to make a slight whining sound. It's hard to hear in 1st and 2nd because the pitch is low, but as I get into 3rd the pitch increases and 4th 5th and 6th the pitch is extremely high. There is no sound on deceleration. Only the constant whine with the pitch increasing as speed increases. Any ideas as to which bearing needs to be replaced? I hope the tranny isn't toast because this was installed last september .
Senior Member
Did this just start "whining" with the warmer weather or does it get worse after driving the car for a while? A whiney tranny doesn't mean that it's necessarily a bearing that is failing/has failed, and other than maybe the differential side bearings there is no way to be able to determine which bearing may have failed without removing and disassembling the tranny. It could also be something else. There are two ball bearings supporting the input shaft, two supporting the mainshaft, and two tapered roller differential side bearings, PLUS a whole bunch of needle bearings supporting gears. Drain the fluid into a clean container and see if the tranny is generating metal. If there is an "abnormal" amount of shiney, ferrous (magnetic) metal, then you'll be yanking the tranny out of the car anyway. You can do a crude check of the differential side (output) bearings by checking for excessive radial "slop" of the driveaxles at the tranny. There should not be excessive slop of the driveshafts or any fluid getting by the seals. The output drive seals can be replaced insitu. If there is not an excessive amount of metal in the fluid and no obvious issue with the differential side bearings, then replenish the tranny fluid and just monitor the sound and operation for a while and see if it gets worse. The "whiney" sound of a tranny is very often caused by the meshing of the differential gears/final drive gear. Some are "whiner" than others.
It's only nine months old and was extremely quiet until today. It hasn't gotten warm yet, in fact it was rather cool out today.