hey guys, i just bought a 4th gen 99 SS G2, with a T56.

its a fix n flip car.

The tranny is shot. grinds, popps out, sounds like it's bone freakin dry, synchros are out, and has been dogged all to heck and back.

anyway, having it rebuilt isn't the hard part, i have money in the budget for it, but, here's the thing:

I know that on the T56 transmissions (if not a lot of the manual transmissions) when they are dogged really badly, sometimes, the bearing's can wear out the case, and start spinning freely, and if that's the case, it's supposedly non rebuildable, according to the guy who's going to do my rebuild when i yank it out from under the car.

He said he'll crack it open and take a look, figure out what all needs to be replaced for free, and give me a quote on parts etc at that time. he's a friend of mine, and i trust him to do a good job, we do a lot of work for eachother etc, so it's not like i called the local aamco and said "hey, i need you to build a transmission worthy of handling the 400 flywheel horses this LS1/LS6 hybrid pushes out (dyno verified by previous owner).

the QUESTION in all of this is; Lets say the bearings are shot, the bearing races, are shot on the cases, and the bearing races are spinning freely inside the transmission (which kind of sounds like it may be the case), instead of buying a new/rebuilt transmission (which isn't in the budget) is it possible to build up tig welds in the races on the case, and have a machine shop bore them back out to factory specs again? would that potentially be MORE cost effective than buying a 2000$ used transmission that may not be in very good shape anyway?

or should i just find some good used cases and use whatever good parts there are in it?

i'm not trying to go over budget with this build, but i do have some set aside.

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edit... i seem to be finding a LOT of freshly rebuilt T56's for around 1400-2k.. i think last time i looked, that's what junk yard transmissions were going for before rebuild.. cool.. they've come down in price. that's nice

 

You're grasping at straws.

You're also wasting time problem-solving before said problem even comes up.

I've built T56s for over 10 years and an outer race spinning is not predictable like that.

Get it apart and post pictures / ask questions then. I can try and help.

 

Word... good point :-) in the meantime, if anyone else has thoughts, let me know, I'll get the tranny out n post pics etc. Will probably have questions along the way

 

Well I guess with that said, im just trying to be thorough and to figure out what all to expect. I'm definitely not a transmission guy, hell, barely a car mechanic, I work with bikes the majority of the time, but have been replacing parts as needed on various hotrods I've owned for nearly two decades.... doesn't qualify me as a car mechanic though. As far as im concerned, transmissions run on puppy fuz and the tears of the chinese kids who made it. ::::shrug:::: could be wrong.