Greetings brothers, Well after 18 months of trouble free motoring I finally have to ask for your help. After a drive out thismorning I noticed some black oil/grease on the floor and rear bumper of my 348, looked like it was coming from the transmission pumpkin, car started ok but could'nt get any gears very easily and when I did it jumped out again a few times, at the same time I'm getting a whining noise in neutral when I release the clutch, Any ideas would be gladly welcomed.
Stop driving and save yourself the possibility of getting stranded somewhere. If you're comfortable working on the car, it sounds like the clutch teflon seals (aka triple seals) have failed. It's a relatively easy fix -- but you might also be due for a clutch and/or throw-out bearing. Do some searches on 'triple seal' and you'll see lots of good pictures and information. edit: just read about the popping out of gear and whirring noise. Yeah, stop driving and get that pumpkin open first.
Your description of the problem seems a bit odd. Just to try to narrow it down a bit, I think the first thing I would do is check the level of the clutch hydraulic fluid (the brake fluid tank in the front trunk), and the level of the transmission fluid (the plug on the left side of the transmission case). If you are very lucky, you might not have any significant problem other than fixing a leak and refilling the fluids. If you're not lucky, you're looking at a transmission overhaul. I certainly wouldn't drive the car until I figured out what's happening with it. Hope it turns out OK! Keep us posted.
Oh man I hope not another one. As Dan said DO NOT drive the car. You could have a few problems. Start by checking your break fluid level and tranny oil level, as Jeff has suggested. The other thing you will want to do is have a look under the tranny, where the pumpkin attaches to the tranny case. There is perferated inspection plate. If you see fluid coming from there you probably have a blown slave cylinder, or bad tripple seals, or both. If that is the case your in good shape, as those problems are not expensive to fix, and you can do it yourself. Now for the bad news. Hopefully the "whine" you are hearing is not what I think it is. Because if it is you are looking at a tranny rebuild. The reason is because, the bearing that sits on the lay shaft, or is it the main shaft...., oh what ever, the shaft that has the bearing for the transmission oil pump has a tendancy to destroy the bearing and send chunks of metal through the gear box. Now again, D O N O T drive the car. Don't even start it. Seriously don't start the car. See what happens is that, because the bearing goes bad it allows the shaft to move around inside the gear box. Well when it moves the gears don't mess properly which is why you hear the whining. So if you have a bad bearing and the shaft has just started to move, you may get lucky and only have to change the bearings. But if you start the car and let the clutch out, while it is neutral, it will still turn the gears inside the gear box, and if you have bits of busted metal in there is can create more havock. So DON'T start it until you figure out what the deal is. Now how do you chack for damage? Well you will first need to drain the gear box oil, you will want to look and see if you find chunks of metal in the oil when you drain it. If you do, then you will need to pull the inspection plate that is on the bottom of the tranny case. Not the one attached to the pumkin, the one on the bottom of the transmission case, and make sure that your gears inside the box are okay. In particular the ring and pinion, because those seem to be the ones to take the biggest hit. I really hope that it isn't that bad, and that your gear whine problem is just that your tranny is low on oil.
You've already got good advice on what to do (above). My uneducated opinion is that the noise you hear is from a bad throw-out bearing...which would also cause a leak of tranny fluid. These are easy to replace. You replace them in concert with new triple seals. Go here for pictorials on opening up the clutch pumpkin and replacing the throw out bearing (and on draining the clutch fluid to check for metal debris, etc.): www.the348.com/tech/348.html
Thanks everyone for the rapid advise, I will check out the things you have told me and let you know the outcome.
Ok guys, here's an update, I have checked transmision oil and clutch fluid levels and they seem ok so I pulled the pumpkin. There is oil dripping from the end of the shaft and one of the triple seals looks in a bad way, the t/o bearing does not look damaged although there is a small amount of play in it, should I replace it when I do the seals anyway? I'm not sure how to get it off are they pressed on? The other question is should I be doing the whole flywheel re-pack thing whilst I have it apart, if it does'nt need it I would rather not, how do I know? There was'nt much in the way of grease in the housing. Thanks guys.
Well that's good to know. I'm assuming that you didn't find any signs of metal in the tranny oil when you drained it. Yes replace the tripple seals and the bearing. You should not have any play in the bearing at all. Well if there is ANY grease in the housing you need to replack the flywheel. Have a really good look at it, then decide on what you want to do. Me, I would just replack it anyway if it was still on the original seal.
Now that you have the tranny oil drained, use Ernie's suggestion of opening up the transmission inspection plate for a good look-see. If you don't see great, glowing, obvious signs of doom behind that plate, and if you don't see any metal bits in your drained tranny fluid, then you've got a pretty reasonable chance of the problem being a simple t/o bearing (email Plugzit and FatBillyBob for how to replace it for under $100) and triple seal job. You can probably save your flywheel grease repacking job for when you replace your clutch one day. If you don't hear an annoying rattle from the rear when you first start and later turn off your engine, then that's not a pressing issue for you. The pressing issues are: #1: are there free floating metal bits in your tranny fluid or visible inside your tranny inspection plate #2: getting a t/o bearing that has no play #3: replacing the triple seals
Sounds like you're in good hands. If you've got an early model with the twin-disc clutch, I can help on the TO bearing-pm me.
Ok guys, here's the update and its not good, Finally found time to do the repairs, I fitted new triple seals and went for the Hill-Engineering 355 T/O bearing and flange upgrade, boxed it all up, bled the clutch and still no improvement. With the engine off, clutch feels fine, I can select most gears without a problem but when I start the engine clutch pedal feels different as if its not really doing much, very difficult to select any gears at all. I still get the whining noise when I lift the clutch in Neutral and the car seems to pull forwards slightly even when not in gear!! Do you think it could be a gear linkage cable problem or is it time to call in the experts?
I'm concerned about the whining noise. You got no metal parts from the trany inspection plate? See ernie post above. I would take the pumpkin off and start the car. there should then be NO whine. If there is you have misdiagnosed the problem. If the whine is gone then the problem is your clutch set-up. Your R R the t/o bearing and flange but what about the clutch plate and Pressure plate condition? Also if you change the flange to the new style then you had the old cast iron t/o bearing which went with perhaps a different clutch and PP assembly which could have a different set-up height. You need to check that the SUH of the old and new flywheel,pp,clutch plates are the same. You need to check an old clutch plate for thickness by putting it in a vise to compress the marcel spring and then measure the compressed vs the uncompressed dimension. Also sometimes clutch plate wear is tapered and part of the disc can be in spec and part out of spec. Did you look at any of these dimensions of just change the t/o and flange? Also, 348's are hard to bleed. Before I got my technique down I have on occassion bled the cltuch driven for miles then get an air bubble that killed clutch function only to have to bleed more before I got all the air out! Air can describe some issues you have but not the whining.
Oh boy, I hate to say it but, I think that we have another victim of the stupid bearing for the gearbox oil pump. DO NOT start the car. If you run it with the bearing messed up you can destroy more stuff inside the tranny. Drain the tranny oil, and remove the inspection plate on the bottom to have a look. Let us know what you find.
Ok, drained the gearbox oil, found a few very small metal shards but nothing major, I've now taken off the inspection cover aswell and all looks ok. Is there anything specific I should be looking for? Is it ok to put in gear and turn with wheels off the ground ?(providing I can get it in gear that is). I've also been reading that these clutches are a nightmare to bleed, so far I've been using an easi-bleed kit that utilises air from a spare tyre to pressurise the system, any other ideas, thanks again guys, Keith.
Okay you may have gotten LUCKY! First of all Do Not, I repeat, DO NOT, run the engine until we get this figured out. Now, how big were the "shards", and how many? See what happens is that the cage for the ball bearings on the tranny oil pump has a tendancy to break. Well the broken pieces, or shards, get sent through the tranny and will DESTROY the ring a pinion gear = BIG $$$$. The only thing you can do to find out for sure is remove the gearbox and take off the cover for the tranny oil pump (it's on the left hand side of the gear box). It isn't a big deal to remove the gear box, and I post instructions on how to pull it. Do a search of the archioves to find it. You can have it out in half a day. Back to the bearing. Once the cage is busted the lay shaft will start to move back and forth. What this does is wear out the syncros on the gears, and can cause the gears to no mesh properly resulting in "whining". Just trust me on this and don't drive the car. Pull the tranny and remove the cover for the left side of the gear box, the side that has the speedo sender on it. It wont' surprise me if you find a busted bearing. Bets, bets, bets anyone.
That'll work, of course, but the easier way to inspect that bearing would be to use this flexible borescope threaded down through either the main tranny fill plug or through the tranny fluid level dipstick tube. So for 100 Pounds the good Brit can check the bearing without having to pull his transmission.
Well, it would seem so but not that easy. The bearing in question sits inside a race, which is then sealed off by the cover. Plus you would have to push the oil screen out of the way with the scope in order to get to the other side of the race. It just isn't possible to do it that way. The only real way to see the stupid bearing is to take off the cover. Actually now that I think of it, you may be able to check the bearing without taking out the gearbox. But you will have to remove the cat on that side of the transmission, so that you have enough room to remove the cover. Have a look to see if you can go that route to check it. The only down side is that, if you do find the bearing is shot you will still have to take the gearbox out anyway to change it.
Your cat removal idea is better. I dig it. So the flexible borescope going through the fill plug on top or through the tranny dipstick tube on the left side wouldn't see the bearing? Too bad. I would have lost money on a bet about that one.
Hey Ernie, would he get some whining with clutch released (that would go away with clutch pedal depressed) if he just had air in his clutch line? Tough to bleed these babies, after all...
No, the whining come from the gears, not the clutch. The air in the lines has nothing to do with the noise.
OK, thanks. For some reason I was just thinking that maybe the bearings inside the slave/throwout might be lubed by clutch fluid instead of tranny fluid, and if so that it might impact noise if there was air in the clutch line...but I haven't seen one so what do I know! Hey, I'm just the Stooge with (almost) no name!
