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My 2005 Insight has developed a noise, my mechanic thinks it's the manual transmission

11722 Views 217 Replies 16 Participants Last post by  FadedBlue
Last summer I thought my IMA battery was dying and bought a grid charger, but it turned out the problem was actually a broken ground strap, so I could have fixed the car for like $10, but spent quite a bit more with buying the grid charger.

Also to get my car to pass inspection last summer, I had to have the one of the motor mounts replaced. Perhaps the broken motor mount was the reason for the broken ground strap.

Anyway since I had the car inspected and the motor mount replaced, I have been noticing a noise during acceleration. Once I am at a steady speed I don't notice the noise. I thought the noise might have been related to the motor mount being replaced, like maybe one of the other motor mounts is shot and the motor is moving around during accleration. However I just took it to the shop to have the oil changed and asked them to check out the noise. The mechanic thinks it is the transmission. I was hoping it might be something cheaper, but thought I would ask the forum for an opinion. Do you think this might really be the transmission? Is this a common problem? Or do you think it might be something else?

If the transmission is going bad and making a noise during acceleration is that something that needs to be addressed soon? The reason why I ask that is a bunch of years ago, I had a 1995 Civic that was noisy in 5th gear, but I just ignored the noise in 5th gear for at least 100K miles, until I needed to get the clutch replaced. Anyway with that car, I bought a rebuilt transmission from a place in California, I think it was called Synchrotech transmissions. So is a noisy MT in an Insight something that is just a slightly annoying noise, but you can ignore it (like I did with my 1995 civic) or is this a sign that the transmission might fail at any moment and leave me stranded? Also if I were to replace the transmission, what would you recommend? A used transmission? A rebuilt transmission from say Synchrotech? Or rebuilt by a forum member?
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It's exceedingly hard to diagnose noises from long distance. So I can't say for sure what the culprit is. However, I would be inclined to believe your mechanic. If you decide to go the transmission rebuild route, here's some food for thought.

Scott (KLR3CYL) and I specialize in rebuilding Insight transmissions. I'm confident in saying nobody does it better than we do.

Every transmission gets completely disassembled, thoroughly cleaned and inspected. We replace all of the bearings. We do the 1st and 2nd gear syncro tab-ectomy. This permanently fixes the downshift grind issue. We restore the ball detents on the shift forks if they are excessively worn. There's more, but you get the idea.

We also do core exchanges where we send you a fully rebuilt transmission and then you send us your original transmission back.
I am interested in knowing more about you and Scott’s fully rebuilt transmission service for my G1 MT Insight. Please PM me with more information. Thank you. :cool:
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