Strange noise from 360 manual transmission...

Motor mount?

 

Could be an exhaust issue occuring from the heat expansion and engine wrap and you then hear the banging from the exhaust tapping against the rear engine area.

Mike,

I may have news for you soon as we had discussed.

 

You are going to have to get someone to look at it. I know those pretty well and from here all I can do is guess it's comming from the back half of the car and that doesn't do much good.

 

No heat shields on my tranny!

It sounds exhaust related to me, and that's a simple fix.

Where are you located?

 

Here are pictures of an 01 360 spyder 6spd trans thats in the shop.
Hope this helps
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My bet that it's the right side exhaust outlet as you look at the rear of the car.

It's tapping against a body panel in that area.

Ferrari-tech's photos clearly show no heat shields.

 

Boy.. I've been all through that area back there working on my 360 and I can't think of anything off hand. If I had to make a guess, I would agree with Greg that perhaps there is a loose mount that is allowing the exhaust tip to bang the body or something. I would check to see how much clearance there is between the tail pipe tips and the body surround back there.

The only other thing I can think of that might cause this problem is the heat shields around the half shafts for the transmission. If you look where the half shafts enter into the gear box, there is a shield which protects the CV boot from excessive amounts of heat from the exhaust system. On some cars the clearance between the shield and the rotating part is very small - to the point where the two can actually touch. My guess would be that perhaps the heat from the exhaust system is causing one of them to warp enough to chatter against the half shaft. At high speeds, it might get pushed out of the way, whereas at low speeds, it might chatter or catch and release against the outer edge of the joint enough to flex and produce a knocking noise when it snaps back. Just a thought. I would at least look down there and see if you can judge the distance around the shields. There are three 10 mm nuts holding each shield in place as I recall. When I installed my tubi and cats, I adjusted those to provide a little additional clearance (on mine, you could see on the right side one where it had contacted the outer edge of the CV joint and rubbed very slightly).

Anyway, I would say it was a long shot, but it might be worth checking. Could also be a torn CV boot hitting something back there as it turns - but again, kind of a long shot. If the CV rubber boot does tear, grease will come out and the joint will fail. When this happens, it does produce a pretty sever knock as the joint buckles without proper lubrication. At higher speeds, you tend not to hear it, whereas at low speeds it can be heard more. My little sister had this happen on a FWD car year ago to the point where I had to drive 150+ miles behind her with grease and nurse the car home for her (stopped every so often to add more grease and (gasp) duct tape to the ribbed CV boot

Knocking from the back of the car is never a good sign, so I would suggest you take a look at it as soon as possible. Have you checked to make sure all the wheel lug bolts are tight? I would also check to see if there might be a loose wheel wait that is hitting the brake caliper back there. I've had that happen on Datsuns and it can produce a knock as the wheel weight slaps the brake caliper at low (but not high) speeds.

Again, just some ideas/guesses.

attached is a photo showing the location of the heat shield back there.

Ray
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We have nothing better to do with our time other than to analyze F Car problems.

We are getting pretty good at it!!!

If you were near by Ray would probably take your car apart for you. He's very good with that. It's like Legos to him!!

Hope you find and resolve the issue.

 

I am glad I found this thread. I am having EXACTLY the same symptoms as quoted. Noise seems to occur only on load or off load.

So far I have checked wheel weights rubbing (ok), removed drive shaft heat shields (noise still there), rubber boots on universal joint/constant velocity joints (ok), wheel stud tightness (ok), exhaust heat shields (ok).

The rubbing noise is quite loud and seems to correlate to drive shaft speed. It is definitely heat related as it only happens when the engine/transaxle is quite warm (after approx 20 minutes driving).

I have also checked the drive shaft flange to transaxle bolts and they are all tight.

I am at my wits end to locate this problem - any suggestions very welcome. The car is a 2000 model 360 stick shift manual and has done 32,000 km's.

Ciao...
Bill