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Manual transmission issue

8K views 26 replies 8 participants last post by  ackattacker 
#1 ·
I am getting ready to yank my transmission out based on the noise diagnosis of ISB pending failure. I also have had another transmission issue since I purchased the car used 100,000 miles age (it had 150,000 miles on it then). It will pop out of 2nd gear if I release the gas pedal after accelerating hard in 2nd gear. This is rarely an issue the way I drive, but figured since the tranny will be out and apart... Anyway, I don't have any of the grinding noise issues I read of others having.
 
#2 ·
I have no direct experience with this, but just a thought: if it pops out of second after accelerating, releasing the gas pedal, the engine/transmission might be moving too much because of a bad rear torque mount - and maybe that's causing the problem, or part of the problem? Seems like the movement would be down/forward, just as though you were shifting out of second... I think when you accelerate the engine tries to rotate counter-clockwise and rearward when viewed from the driver-side. A good torque mount would limit the movement. When you let off the gas the engine/transmission would shift clockwise and forward, back to where it was to begin with. A bad torque mount could easily allow say double, triple the movement...
 
#3 ·
Only if the shifting was done by rods. The Insight uses cables.
(My opinion)
Wait for Jeff652 to respond.
 
#7 ·
It could just be another manifestation of the prior owner getting too rough with the poor thing on 5th - 2nd downshifts. If you have ever worked on a manual, the Insight 5 speed is pretty simple. If not, then it is a good unit to learn on. Just make sure you have the service manual. Apart from second gear and synchros, the main things to check are the detent and countershaft bearings especially the big needle bearing. Presumably, if it was a problem with the detent, i.e. a weak or broken spring, 1st and 2nd shifts, with the car off, would feel noticeably different from 3rd and 4th.
 
#8 · (Edited)
My gut says axles, probably blown bearing somewhere in axle shafts. If it was ISB, you would hear a sound or a change in sound when depressing or releasing the clutch (moving or not). Since you don't have that symptom, and your popping/knock sounds only happens when the car is moving, I'm leaning toward drive line (axle or brakes).

Do this: Find a downhill, while rolling down the hill at speed and hearing the noise push clutch in. Does noise go away?

EDIT: This test may not be conclusive. If the problem is in the transmission, the noise may still remain. Hrmm need to think of another way to diagnose this.
 
#9 ·
Hand shaking the axles going into the transmission from underneath?
 
#12 ·
What will that tell you? I have a clunking noise when the engine first starts up and also when it idles. I can duplicate the sound by shaking the axles going into the trans. so it's not the engine mounts. Is there a bearing that the axles mate to inside the transmission that could be worn/loose?
 
#10 ·
Hi Jeff,

I cannot make the noise happen when the clutch is not out since I need to be accelerating. It really does sound like it's coming from the center-right front of the vehicle. Brake pads are new and it made the noise before they were changed.

I did just jack up each front side individually to take each wheel off the ground. I spun each wheel under engine power in 1st and 2nd gear to check for wheel bearing noise. Heard nothing except a bit of differential noise which sounded normal for spinning one wheel at a time. I could not make the knocking sound occur in this manner.

Will get under the vehicle and check for axle looseness tomorrow. Have to take a road trip right now and will see if I can find a parking lot to test if the noise is different while accelerating into a turn or not.
 
#11 ·
Hi Jeff,

took the transmission out and disassembled it over the weekend. I can say that both the input shaft bearing and the bearing at the other end of the mainshaft are noisy and a bit rough when rotated by hand. All the other bearings are quiet and smooth when rotated by hand, but when I actually put the pieces together and spin things all the bearings are a little noisy, this includes the two bearings on the big transaxle gear and the bearings on the countershaft - is this normal in your experience?

Since I am mainly looking for the rattle sound when accelerating in first gear, I will take a very close look at everthing, but right off one thing I notice is that the single synchro collar that rides on the countershaft is very loose - it can be wiggled side to side quite a lot - again, does this seem normal?

The synchro rings themselves do not look that bad and I was not having any trouble shifting. I did have an occasional pop out of 2nd gear, but only if I was decelerating hard from an upshift into 2nd. I do not see any metallic destruction in this tranny at all. The car has 250k miles on it, 100k of those were driven by me. The tranny fluid has not been changed since I've owned the car.

I am asking for your expertise on this since I see you have worked on a bunch of these.

Thanks,

--Paul R.
 
#15 ·
Sorry been swamped since my backpacking trip last weekend. Still trying to catch up. The bearings should be silky smooth. Any roughness is a flag for replacement. The rear main shaft bearing is around $25, and since you already have to re-shim the main shaft, you might as well do both. A very small amount of bearing noise is OK, as the fluid eliminates that. If there is roughness, that is not OK. Then again if it was my trans, I'd replace all of them ;-) - they are relatively cheap.

I don't remember any excessive play on the 1-2 syncro ring (on the counter shaft). Maybe a mm or two. I don't have one to compare at the moment. They don't normally fail, unless there is damage to the ring teeth. When you disassemble the counter shaft, post a couple photos of the ring teeth.

How did the ball bearing springs look? If one is softer than the others, could contribute to coming out of gear. Also low fluid and bad ISB can all cause strange things to happen. What is the condition of your ISB?
 
#13 ·
Many of the uneven shifting problems may be due corrosion and lack of lube within the cables, pivots, and shift mechanism parts.
I experiment the exact symptom last winter whith my shifter pop up to neutral.
This begin with second gear and 2 mounth later i got 3 and 4 pop up to.

After i whack the mechanism pivot at the end of 2 cable beside the transmission with wd40 and a sand paper to remove the rust,and lubrificate the pivot with white grease.
I got no more pop up shifter since.

Some time small solution for big problem.
 
#14 ·
My Insight makes *exactly* the same noise accelerating in 1st and a bit in 2nd. It also makes a little obvious ISB noise. I have a new ISB in hand and am getting ready to yank the transmission... following this thread with extreme interest.

Mine does not pop out of gear, though.
 
#17 ·
I am going to replace the ISB, the rear main shaft bearing, and the countershaft big needle bearing. These all have roughness, especially the ISB. The ISB has some major flat spots if I spin it with the shaft installed horizontally. I decided against replacing the axle carrier bearings as these are quite quiet when the gear axis is horizontal. I did not detect any issue with any of the CV joints on the axles.

The shim job looks like the hardest part. Guess the goal is to get the proper end-play when the shaft is installed and both halves of the case are bolted together. Is that special jig tool the FSM shows to grab the shaft and pull it out against the spring washer really necessary or is there some other way that works?
 
#18 ·
The shim job looks like the hardest part. Guess the goal is to get the proper end-play when the shaft is installed and both halves of the case are bolted together. Is that special jig tool the FSM shows to grab the shaft and pull it out against the spring washer really necessary or is there some other way that works?
I do not perform the end play test - it is redundant. If you can measure distance A and B properly and do the calculations, you do not need that 'test'.

:)
 
#20 ·
I'm hoping what you're thinking. The ISB flat spot does not occur on every rotation of the bearing - I guess the balls have to get in a particular orientation to make it happen, so the period of the noise is longer than the rotational period.

My experience with the AC clutch bearing on this car also is making me think these bearings are capable of anything. When I spun the AC bearing by hand it made a roaring sound, but in operation I thought the timing chain was beating against the timing cover and was about to let go. When I replaced the AC bearing 85% of the noise in my car went away.

Looking over all the gears and synchros I cannot justify spending money on them since the tranny was shifting ok with no grinding or excessive effort. They are expensive, at least for me.

BTW, the parts came already from Bernardi Honda - I am used to waiting a lot longer. Am going away for a week so will start the rebuild when I get back. Will let everyone know what transpires.
 
#21 ·
Just a quick follow up on my transmission, which was making the exact same noise shown in the video (and a little low growling, not much).

Pulled the transmission apart and the ISB is *clearly* shot. The balls are all chewed up and it spins only with reluctance, with a horrible notchy feel. I'm amazed it wasn't making more noise than it was. Plenty of metal fuzz on the magnet, although not as bad as some pictures I've seen.

The bearing on the other side of the input shaft seems pretty good but I'm not 100% happy with the way it feels so I'm replacing it out of an abundance of caution.

All other bearings feel excellent. 2nd gear syncro had just the very beginning of the appearance of wear, where the clocking teeth engage. I debated what to do, seeing as how there's no grinding, and ultimately decided to do the mod - grind off the clocking teeth. I don't want to have to pull this thing apart again in 25k miles and I can live with a stiffer downshift.

Waiting on a few miscellaneous parts from Majestic Honda and the whole thing should be back together again next week.

BTW this is the first time I've ever been inside a transmission and don't have a "shop" per-se. Basement for the dirty stuff and kitchen for the clean stuff. But once I got into it, it went fairly smoothly. Followed the manual and plenty of old threads on here, and I did it without any particularly fancy tooling. I did use an impact wrench on a few things such as the countershaft nut and the axle nut, and that was very helpful but probably not strictly necessary. I did have to buy the 30mm and 32mm sockets. I also loaned a few tools from Autozone, bearing puller and driver and some suspension tools since I'm doing front shocks while it's all apart.
 
#22 ·
Looks like your transmission will be back in operation before mine will be. Good to hear you have the same noise and are seeing the same wear items. Let me know how it shifts with the clocking teeth mod. I didn't plan on doing that, but like you say pulling this thing apart is not a 40 minute job and I would like to avoid doing it again soon. In my case I am doing the clutch, pressure plate and associated bearings while the tranny is out. I had the machine shop clean up the flywheel surface.
 
#23 ·
Yup, I'm doing the clutch also... seems like the time to do it. I'm not machining the flywheel though, it's still as smooth as a baby's bottom so I'll just dress it with a little sandpaper.

These clutches seem to have a long life. My 150,000 mile clutch has 57% of it's life left according to the thickness specs.
 
#24 ·
I read all the threads about the clocking tab removal mod for the 1st and 2nd synchros. It would seem to save a lot of money over replacing these parts. Does anyone know how long the transmission lasts after this mod? Was curious how far anyone has driven with no issue after grinding off the clocking tabs.
 
#25 ·
I put my car back together yesterday. The knocking noise is gone now, which means it almost had to be the ISB since I only changed three bearings and that was the only one with bad roughness and a flat spot.

I decided against disassembling the counter shaft - I did not have access to a press and did not have any issue with the car shifting. The issue with the car popping out of 2nd gear on hard deceleration is also gone - this could have been a combination of things, the ISB, lubrication of the external linkage as someone pointed out, and/or the detent ball bearing springs (I did replace these springs since they were cheap and easy).

A couple of things that may help some others: 1) taking out the axles. I did not separate the ball joint or remove the two bolts from the strut (as these are the camber adjustment according to the FSM). Instead, I removed the two bolts that hold the lower control arm to the frame then slid the arm away from the frame. This was very easy to do and did not alter my wheel alignment.

2) I did change both bearings on the transmission main shaft and followed the measurement procedure to determine the shim thickness for the main shaft. The measurement procedure has a wide variance no matter how I tried it and I was not comfortable at all "averaging three measurements" when the variation was many times the step size in the available shim thicknesses. It became clear to me that this method of selecting shim size was a rough-in and the "real" measurement is the 2nd one in the FSM that requires a tool to pull the shaft out against the spring washer to measure the shaft displacement range. Since I did not have such a rig, I settled on just feeling the shaft after dry assembly (no gasket sealant) - if I could move the shaft in and out even a tiny bit by hand that would be too much play (because that spring washer is pretty stiff), and if there was any binding on rotation there was not enough end play. What I found was my tranny was just fine with the original shim, which is consistent with my experience with many modern bearings - the manufacturing tolerances are extremely tight and the new bearings are the same size as the old.

Lastly, I am enjoying the new clutch - so much smoother.

Thanks everyone for your help.
 
#26 ·
That is great news! I had hoped to get mine together last week, but the parts took a bit longer than expected and then I took an impromptu camping vacation (well worth it!) So mine should be together this week, and it sounds like the new bearings will take care of the knocking noise.

A few pointers from my disassembly... you don't actually need a press to take apart the countershaft. I followed some advice an a different thread and just took the nut off (reverse thread!!), then dropped the whole thing about 8 inches onto concrete, while supporting it loosely with my hands. All the gears and synchros just fell right off the shaft, no problem, and no damage to the threads. Reassembly is just a little tap tap tapping with a hammer and some sockets and some assembly lube.

Also, I took the axles out the same way you did, except I also took the struts out (since I'm replacing them), so I guess a camber re-alignment is in my future.

Also, my Exedy clutch kit was only $200 or so, shopping around, but came with an incorrectly sized pilot bearing. I did end up resurfacing the flywheel (for $80, ouch!) and the machinist recommended just reusing the old bearing (since it seemed fine), but a quick call to Exedy and they sent out a replacement pilot bearing right away.

Grinding off the clocking tabs was a simple matter of using a dremel and a grinding stone. It does make a bit of a metallic mess so I recommend doing it in a space separate from the rest of the transmission bits. I don't know the long-term affects, but I'm trusting the transmission guru's who came up with the mod.
 
#27 ·
One last follow up... I took another vacation so everything took a lot longer than expected.

My transmission is now in and running. No problems to report. The change in noise level from the transmission is dramatic vs. the failing ISB. I still have an occasional rattle at idle which I'm attributing to a worn A/C bearing but might be piston slap or something else. But no transmission noises.

The change in shift behavior with the ground off clocking tabs is minimal. I don't really notice the difference on the 3rd-2nd downshift. The 2nd-1st downshift takes a little more effort I think. Nothing you'd notice if you weren't looking for it.

I did end up getting the flywheel resurfaced. $80 (ouch). Took em 30 minutes. Pretty good money for them. With the new clutch, and resurfaced flywheel, I don't get the shudder I used to get occasionally on launch. Nice and smooth.

I didn't see any way to adjust the camber. It seems to be set by the location of the holes drilled in the front struts. I don't think it's adjustable at all, so I'm not worrying about it.

A few gotchas... be careful not to pull on the axles when removing them like I did. You can easily pull apart the inner joints. Then you have to open up the boot to get everything back into place. What else... lining up the transmission input shaft with the engine is a real chore. But with some manhandling and careful wiggling it eventually goes in. Once that's done the hard work is over and it's just reassembly. In many ways the Insight is a joy to work on compared to some other cars. Plenty of access to most bolts and everything is nice and light and fairly rust-free.
 
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