I'm currently looking at a wonderful 97 SE owned by a good friend of mine. I currently have the car at my house, and have been cleaning it up and checking it over very thoroughly...

Now to the story: Two nights ago I was driving it around my housing tract a bit to get a good feel for the car, comparing it to my Honda Accord, etc, and on a 3-4 shift, I heard a clunk, and then coming from the transmission and radiating through the shifter was a whirring noise, like a gear skimming another gear, or something like that. This noise is quite speed variable and also has a slight (also speed variable) clunking.

So today: I went to a VERY GOOD local transmission shop, and I described the problem to the owner, who has been servicing vehicles in our family for a great deal of time, and he took the car out for a quick drive, and also came to the same conclusion I did... Final Drive Gear Bearing. Immediately after, I thought to myself what could possibly have caused it to do such a thing, and I guessed it could be low oil, and the oil is crystal clear and there's no metal in it, and it's full. So... only other guess is that it's just tons of stress from many trips to the drag strip and AutoX by the previous owner.

So to the questions:
1) Is my immediate analysis correct in that it could be the final drive gear bearing?
2) How cheap could I get a Canadian tranny for? (LSD = )
3) Would I be better off rebuilding the original or getting a replacement?

 

The 4th gen transmissions suck. I wouldn't be surprised if all of your bearings are on the way out. You could get them replaced for about as much as a used transmission.

I'd vote on replacing the bearings. If you get a used one, you'll most likely experience bearing failure down the road anyhow.

Just make sure whoever does it shims it properly.

 

Okay... so the rebuild is a HELL NO! The tranny died tonight. She spilled her guts all over the street... quarts of GM Synchromesh all over the ground.

Now... Trannies: Where can I get them, and where can I get them cheap and where can I get them FAST!!!???

 

www.car-parts.com

 

i work at kragen auto parts, and i just checked today, because my tranny is having problems. one of our vendors called accurate transmission sells a remanufactured tranny with a 12 month/12,000 mile warranty for only $1280.99! im thinking of going that route. its not that much more than a used one, and it has been completely rebuilt. plus i get a discount!

 

The cheapest I can find is around 600... so I believe I'm going to get one of those. Used, but 22k miles on it. If anyone can find cheaper, I'd kill to find one of them.

Thank you guys for the help... I needed it.

BTW, could it have been the syn gear oil used in the tranny that could have caused it? I believe it may have been GM Synchromesh that was used, if that was the culprate, I know the people responsible for it. That stuff smells horrible too, it's like someone vomited in hydraulic oil... so smelly.

 

And just a quick update:

I took a quick check under the car at the transmission, and I really couldn't find anything... so I wiped it down clean, etc... and then I notice the piece of aluminum that looked like a big booger... [Austin Powers]"That's not roight...[/Austin Powers] And I realized there's a chunk of aluminum on the tranny casing that has cracked and "bulged" from the rest of the casing, allowing trans oil to leak (which the trans oil coming out has a lot of metal in it from the bearing)

It's going to be a looooooong night. Driving to near PA tomorrow I guess to pick up a new transmission.

 

:

Post some if you can...I'm curious.

 

I'm hoping this works... using a friend's FTP...



Happy? Blurry pic of bulging and no more oversized pic.

 

lol...not a pic of your car pissing! A pic of the 'swelling'.

You might want to scale that pic down too

 

good luck with your tranny. Hopefully when u fix it, no other problems arise and hopefully ur car runs stronger than ever.

I hear many stories of trannies going out. Is this because of driving hard and fast? Or do they just suck period? Because my car's been on one tranny and it's been about 160k. IMO, that's a good tranny. Hope it'll last the life of the car, or if it goes out then I can do a tranny swap yay!

 

The trannies don't suck, per se. It's just that the build quality isn't that great. If a 4th Gen tranny is rebuilt properly, it's not a bad tranny at all.

 

sryth: I changed the pictures so they should link up correctly now... It didn't work too well at first, oh, and I'll get a better quality picture as soon as I get my lowboy jack back...

But what the picture shows is there's a bulge with complementing crack that is about 75% the size of a dime that is allowing trans oil to leak out of it.

Oh, do many people freeze harden their transmissions? For the money, I think it may be worth it, for a little extra piece of mind with longevity.

 

That pic is way too out of focus to really see anything. Get a better one up...I'm damn curious now

By 'freeze harden' I assume you mean cryotreatment. It's not that pricey, but you need to have the tranny apart.

So, you have the labor of tearing down a tranny, then you get to ship the internals somewhere (unless they do it locally) and wait a couple weeks to get them back.

Not something you can do conveniently if the Maxima's your daily driver.

 

Gimme a little time, I need my lowboy jack back. It's out of trans oil now, so once I get the jack back I can take all the pictures I want.