diablo1977

My car has a T5 tranny (the earlier model, not the world class) and it whines in 5th gear. It only does it while accelerating. I read it may be a bad throwout bearing although I wasn't sure if it applied in my situation. If was wondering anyone could provide insight on how bad the damage is, whether I can drive in the first 4 without damaging it further, and also if $550 a good price for a 92 world class. If I remember correctly I saw a thread where a member said they got them for like $200, although I may be wrong.

sofakingdom

iTrader: (1)

No, it is not the clutch release bearing. THIMK: that part isn't doing anything any different in 5th than it's doing in any other gear.

It's not sunny enough out for me to look up inside your transmission and tell how bad your gear is. It's REAL DARK in there right now.

How long did it run dry before this started up?

diablo1977

What do you mean run dry? To my knowledge it has never not been filled with transmisson fluid, if that's what you're asking. Would a new gear set fix my problem? I found one on summit for like 107

diablo1977

oh and it has made the noise since I've had the car

sofakingdom

iTrader: (1)

Run dry = operated without fluid

The usual malfunction with that transmission is, it stretches across the front, where it bolts up to the bell housing.

Here is a photo of acoupla junk transmissions sitting on my shelf. The top one is the 1st design, the bottom is the 2nd.

[img]https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/atta...c-t-5s-1st-2nd[/img]

Observe the dark stain below the front countergear bearing (the thing that looks kinda like an upside down freeze plug, about 2¼" dia, partially covered by the rusty clutch gear bearing retainer). That was caused by fluid leaking out of this transmission, around that bearing.

The reason the fluid leaks out, is because the case is "stretched". There is SO LITTLE metal across the front of it, that when high torque is applied, the metal .... stretches. The countergear bearing elongates: the hole changes from a circle to an oval. Additionally, it allows the clutch gear & countergear to misalign, which puts even more "stretching" force on it the next time high torque is applied, which allows it to leak more and allows more misalignment, which puts more "stretching" force on the case, which elongates the hole still further and allows even more fluid to dump out and the gears to misalign even more, which puts more "stretching" force on the case next time high torque is applied, ... not hard to figure out where this is going. The same phenomenon is called "circling the drain" in some other disciplines.

The thumbnail is an empty 1st design case, again, sitting on my shelf of sh ... ummmm ... animal-generated fertilizer. Not sure why I still have it, I threw away a dumpster full of wasted crap like this some time back including probably 4 or 5 of these, but somehow this one escaped. W/e. Regardless of all that, note how LITTLE metal there is between the clutch gear bearing hole (the big one) and the countergear bearing hole. Note how THIN the case is overall. It's just not set up to deal with very much power. Note also that it has the same "stain" on the bottom, even after however much I cleaned it up. (probably the quarter car wash)

If I were the betting kind (I'm not... I'm a college statistics teacher in some of my spare time sometimes) I'd bet that (a) your transmission is low of fluid right now, and that (b) it has been run all the way dry in the past, before you got it, that (c) it leaks just like the ones in my photos and that's why it is/has been dry, and that (d) since 5th gear is back in the extension housing well above the level of most of the other gears and the holes that connect it to the fluid sump are up kinda high such that it's the 1st thing that runs dry when the fluid leaks out, that it's smoked from running dry.

I don't know about getting a set of gears for $107. In my experience a SINGLE gear has always been more than that. Butt hay, if you can get a complete 5th gear set (2 gears) for a GM T-5 for that price, and you feel up to tackling a partial transmission teardown, go for it.

What sort of car is this in? Obviously a pre-88 one; but, ... details? What kind of history does it have? (that you know of)

diablo1977

Its in an 83 high output Z28. The car has 94,000 miles although it was used as a track car back in the 90's when the father of the seller owned it. They had weight reduction stuff like AC delete and I believe the other 3 seats were taken out for a while and stored, as they aren't nearly as faded, and there were also faded spots where they had numbers on the doors. I'm sure it was driven pretty hard, so im not very surprised. Although before her dad owned it I know nothing about it

sofakingdom

iTrader: (1)

That's what my car is. Sounds like yours has had a ... full ... life experience.

I tore up about 4 or 5 T-5s with the weenie 305, and then ALOT LOT LOT LOT more after I dropped a 400 in it.

If your car is still in good shape (body, interior, etc.) I'd suggest NOT spending even ONE DIME on the T-5, other than keeping it full of fluid. Save your coins for a T-56 swap. The T-5 has no future whatsoever.

I drove 4-speeds, Muncies & T-10s, for some decades before I bought my car. Traded in a 79 Z28 Super T-10 4-speed (what a steaming bucket of spit that car was... a story for another time) at the dealer, on my 83 L69 car. I can remember buying at least 4 or 5 1st design T-5s over the lifetime of the transmission; probably rebuilt it at least a dozen times, maybe more like 20, before I finally gave up on it, bought a 2nd design out of a 1LE car in maybe 97 or so intending to do that just once until I could put in a T-56, and forced myself to learn how to lift my foot off the gas in between gears. Imagine: lift the gas while pushing the clutch!!! Humiliating. Painful experience, training myself to drive like my grandma, butt hay, I got 40k miles or so out of that last T-5 while I was collecting T-56 parts.

I'm curious about the $107 gear set. Post a link. Be aware, your transmission has the coveted .73 5th ratio, but probably 95% of all V8 F-body T-5s were behind LG4 and L03, which got the lame .63 5th. I screwed up and put one of those in my car once, and it was SO BAD, I tore it back down the next weekend and put the right gear back in... the weenie grocery-cart gear made it seem like the car needed a 4½th gear all the time, it was just too much RPM drop from 4th to 5th. Not "performance" oriented at all.

My car has I'm sure over 300k miles on it now (used it as a work truck for quite a few years with no working speedo or odo, but it's gone well over 200k on the dash) and is pretty much completely used up. The chassis is coming apart: all the spot welds are cracked and the car is just coming to pieces. I had the accessible ones re-welded up once and that made the car MUCH better, but when other ones that are not so easy to get to started breaking, I knew there was no saving it. Not sure what I'm going to do with it now. Probably take all the goodies out of it and throw away the chassis and find another chassis with less abuse on it.