Okay, here's the problem: Last night I went to take off from a red light at medium throttle and I didn't get to third gear before I got a loud, repeating "CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK" that I could feel through the shifter. I pulled over immediately and shut off, did a quick visual inspection, and started the car back up. The engine runs fine.

I limped home about seven miles, never really getting over 30 mph. If I changed velocity too much in braking or cornering, there was a rattling sound like something in the bottom of a pan somewhere shifted and started bumping against some moving part. Other than that, the car seemed to run and shift perfect in all gears, although the clutch felt a little grainy.

Today, I pulled the dust cover off the scattershield and used a mirror and a flashlight to look in the clutch housing, but I couldn't see anything resting on the bottom. A visual inspection under and over only turned up a slightly torn motor mount on the driver's side (which may have been there before), and the fact that the shifter now hits the passenger side of the center console (in neutral pushed all the way over). The only other thing I noticed was that before it happened, the engine was having trouble idling, almost like it had drag on it. I raised the idle a little before I limped home, and this went away.

I retrofitted the T-5 behind a mild 350 in place of the old 700R. I also recently just replaced the rear axle with a 3.23 10-bolt and truck style posi that I assembled myself. The axle's probably got about 5k miles on it since the rebuild.

I can't do anything on it until Thursday, so I'd like y'alls opinions as to what could be the problem. All ideas welcome.

 

It's kinda hard to make a positive guess on the info you provided, but the one thing that got my attention is the mention of a locker unit in the rearend. It wouldn't surprise me at all if your locker managed to get stuck halfway between being locked and unlocked. This will cause the side gears to ratchet really loud since they're indexing, but not fully engaging. I won't hesitate to tell you that lockers are nothing but an irritating, noisy PITA to use in a street driven car. I ran one for a few years in my 69 Camaro's 12 bolt rear (Powertrax), and I didn't have an ounce of remorse when I took it out and sold it to some poor schmo on ebay. I've since replaced it with a nice, quiet, and smooth Eaton clutch style posi. That damn Powertrax unit would catch funny sometimes halfway through a turn and pop so loud, you'd swear you just snapped an axle in half. Not to mention it would jerk the whole rear of the car sideways when this happened. Maybe your noise is totally unrelated to the locker, but that's where I'm placing my bet.

 

Sorry about the vaugeness of it, but its all I have to go on. But yeah, I'm really hoping that the rear is either in semi-lock or just dropped some part. That'll be way easier for me to fix than something inside the T-5. Thursday morning I'll be able to pop it open, and hopefully I'll find something in there. Thanks!

 

You may not end up finding anything when you open it up. My Powertrax would make ungodly noises sometimes, but whenever I inspected it, there wasn't a blemish on anything. I'll give it credit for being a very tough unit, but it was just too noisy and erratic for my own personal taste to keep in a street car. If you haven't had any more strange problems or noises with it since the other day, I probably wouldn't worry too much about pulling the cover to check it.

 

In case you were interested, I found out what was wrong. I broke the transmission mount, and a u-joint was hitting a heat shield. This also tore one of my motor mounts, which threw the whole thing out of alignment. The whole drivetrain is pointed slightly toward the right rear tire.

 

Gotta love all that torque huh? Lol.