Cascade Crew

[Alphius]

I worked on a couple little things on my head swap then got down to business on figuring out what's wrong with my two slightly broken T5s.

1. Chatter on coast in second gear.
2. Whine in 5th.

I can't find out what is making the one whine in 5th, but I suspect it might be a normal whine. This transmission was Lee's and was rebuilt by a shop. They did a horrible job, RTV everywhere in the case and crappy silver spraypaint on top of the layer of grease. This transmission was also running gear oil, which I don't like. There was some RTV in the teeth of the 5th gear so I'm hoping if I clean it all up and run ATF in this one it will be fine for me.

The chatter in second one was obvious. This one was BigBoi4Lyph's with an eBay bearing/synchro rebuild kit. My question is would this ever be OK to run or will it chew itself up in short order? I found a couple metal flake looking chips in the case of this one, and it also had too much RTV holding it all together. Altogether the case was cleaner though.

[Alphius]

Advice from professional trans rebuilding books:
If the chip is less than 1/4 of the gear face you can de-burr the edges with a small die grinder and run it with no ill effects.

I'll be keeping the chipped one as my spare I think and running the whiny one which may be fixed with a good cleaning and reassembly. The one currently in my car could be a good spare also since it runs fine but one mounting ear is broken off the case and it has a few helicoiled holes. It'll be my second spare.

The endplay/preload on both is set correctly.

[jchaussee]

If you feel like selling a spare and I don't sell my car let me know

[aaron_sK]

You need a shop, Gabe.

[Alphius]

[Leejo2005]

Sorry, I was pretty cheap. Hopefully they didn't do anything that can't be undone. I don't trust myself with transmissions. I did do my rear axle which is doing good so far. Good luck!

[Twilightoptics]

That chip is nothing. File it down so the gears mesh smoothly.

Whine's can be gear mesh or bearing.

t5's should be run with ATF. I know some of the earlier ones call for diff lube, but clearly they changed it without changing the design of the trans at all. Mainly I think because there are small orifices that the oil must flow through, and the thick gear oil doesn't do a good job. Ontop of that, the oil pump in the back is plastic, plastic doesn't do well with the thick stuff.

I ran Royal Purple in all of the ones I built for customers and never a complaint.

[chevymad]

Was just wondering if they put the gear oil in it trying to quiet it down? As in.. we just rebuilt this thing and oh shizzle its noisey!

[Alphius]

I'm gonna run the one that whines first and if it's too bad I'll clean up the chip on second and use that one instead. I have choices.

I don't think the fifth one's whine is a bearing since none of the other gears were especially whiny according to Lee. It may be bad engagement but the pattern on the fifth gears looks fine so we'll see. There was a bunch of RTV stuck to the valleys on one of the fifth gears.

That was the big problem with both transmissions I suspect, that whoever glued the cases together used about 10 times as much RTV as necessary. It probably caused the chip in second on the one transmission.

[Twilightoptics]

Silicone won't hurt a thing.

[Alphius]

What if a big clump goes through the gears? Seems to me that could hydraulic a chip off pretty easily.

Anyway, it doesn't matter much. What's done is done, and I put them back together better than those chuckleheads at the shop anyway. I'll see how they run when my car gets back together.

[Twilightoptics]

Those gears will chew it up like nobody's business.

Granted, there shouldn't be so much that it's in the crevas of the gear teeth, but yeah.

The only issue it would cause, is if it was still wet and spooged into an oil hole for the gear.