or at least one of them.

In case nobody knows, my 5spd tranny (on my 97 w/ 72000mi) is going bad. Noises, etc. Lately the tranny's been leaking oil...quite a bit, too. At least a 1/2 qt as far as I can tell, or so I thought...

Well, I was changing the oil on the car yesterday and looking for the source of the leak. It's coming out from where my driver's side driveshaft goes into the transmission! There's been a LOT that's come out, too...the underside of my car is nasty. The steering rack is covered in sludge.

Accidentally, I pulled on the driveshaft, and lo and behold, the shaft has TONS of movement. In and out towards the tire, but also up/down. I bet my differential bearing is GONE. The bad bearing probably damaged the seal, so now it's leaking.

So my guess is that maybe all the noises, etc from my tranny are due to a severely low transmission fluid level. That might also explain the stiff shifting in 1/2nd gears. The car is also really loose on the road, especially on bumpy roads. I thought the Konis would take care of all that, but the wandering is still present. A bad differential (or at least one with bad tolerances due to a fried bearing) would cause that, I'd imagine.

I think the noisy clutch is probably just due to a clutch and throwout bearing that are at the end of it's life.

So, my dilemma is I'm broke, have a major vacation that I'm trying to save up for, and I'm driving a death trap that I can't afford to fix until next year.

What really pisses me off is that I've always taken care of this car. MTF changes every 15-20K miles and never abused the tranny. F'ing FWD. I can't believe nobody else, especially you nitrous and SC guys haven't had any manual tranny issues. This tranny sucks.

 

Same thing. My Bearings were shreaded I also thought it was my throw out bearing at first and swaped the clutch. That didn't work and I also started leaking alot of oil. So I asked my dad to open the trany and sure enough the bearing fell apart as he pulled the out. I was lucky nothing fell between the gear causing to lock up or something. I live close to wark so nothing ever happened. Just in parts I paid about $400 from Nissan. I went ahead and replaced all the bearing. But since the Rrrrrr rrrrrr rrrrr was so loud
couldn't here my wheel bearing was also going bad due to curb encounter a few weeks before. This isn't including the labor a shop would charge. I still feel 5th gear hard to pull out so I'm not sure if I'll keep the trany.

Oh and I did spray NOS for a year or so.

 

It's good to hear that someone here had a similar problem with their 5spd. It sounds like you had the same noise as me now...grrr grrr. Really annoying grrr/groaning sound.

 

Had the bearings go in my 5spd at 60K miles. I noticed a hum at highway speeds and immediately brought it to the dealer. They were pretty cool with it, they never mentioned any of the mods on my car. Luckily it was under warranty so I got a loaner car. Also it was something like 12 hours of labor at 75 per hr.