All:

I drained and flushed the gearbox on my non-lsd, '85 5-speed. During the flush (car is on stands) I ran it gently through the gears twice. In the higher gears it seemed to have a lot of chatter as it idled. This is hard to quantify, so the question is vague, but I'm wondering if that is normal. With no tension on the gears, it slops back and forth. There were 2 quarts of flush in the box if that makes any difference. If I was doing it again, I would use at least 3, but it is a bear getting the stuff in there laying on your back. Anybody else done this/heard this?

90K on the odometer. It seems this is not the first oil change for her, as the drain plug has the magnet center and that was not OEM, so somebody has replaced the original. There were some filings covering the magnet, but I guess that is normal for this many miles.

 

Never tried running mine on stands, perhaps next time.

2 metres of 12mm poly tubing and a funnel worked for me.

Hope your drain plug magnets didn't look like mine!

 

I would suspect its normal, due to bearing and gear wear, and uneven running at idle. It disappears with only minimal throttle added? The old transverse BMC engines with an idler gear between crank and gearbox input shafts were very noisy in old age.
jp 83 Euro S AT 49k

 

Steve,

I had some chatter in mine as well. If you're lucky, like I was, you can pop off the rubber plug in the bottom of the torque tube, torque the rear clamp to spec, and the noise will go away.

HTH

 

Not sure I'ld use flush in a gearbox - not like there are lots of high temp combustion products to get rid of but what the..
But if it was an Engine flush viscosity it would be pretty much guaranteed to rattle your fillings out especially cold.

Easiest way to fill the gearbox is to use a Garden pressure sprayer - the 1 gallon plastic bottle type that you pump up then go spray the roses with - remove the spray nozzle and trigger from the delivery hose - fill with 75W90 then insert hose in 5sp transmission fill hole (you did remove the fill plug before the drain plug !) and pump up. When the oil flow out the fill hole let the pressure off the pressure bottle with the pressure relief valve. You can pick up cheap pressure sprayers here in NZ for $10NZ (about $7US) - well worth an hour of my time squeezing a plastic bottle. If you only put in 3.8L or 4.3L for an S4 it runs out before it overflows.

Jon in NZ
Black SE
Silver 90 GT
3 cheap pressure sprayers

 

2nd vote for TT clamp check. We have two tubes in rebuild currenty because rear clamp had been loose. Old bores were ground away and new medal welded to shafts. Machine shop will do new bores to them next and then they're off to oven for hardening. It hasn't been particulary fun project.





If it's not coming from TT clamp my next bet would be four small gears in differential. It doesn't take much wear on them and/or their differential casting contact surfaces to create chatter. You can check this by holding one drive shaft inner joint steady and rocking other. If the is too much play it's those small gears.









Only third option would be ring and pinion or gear different themselves.

 

Hi Erkka,

what is the definition of to much play here?

Cheers/Peter

 

Thanks for the relpies and pictures. I will take a look at the clamp. It sounds like it is coming from inside the box and I think it is associated with the play you get when you spin a free standing wheel, probably normal: we baby these cars and want everything to be nice and shiny and tight and that is not the way it is.

Paul, the build up was considerably less than on yours, but as I said, I think this was the second change of oil for this box- total miles 90K.

 

Don't have exact idea. Probably depends who you ask. Little is normal and needed.