I'm guessing this is NOT good? I can see it spinnin' inside...

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Leaving work, I started the car and popped the hood. Immediately saw the hole. Looked under car, and some fluid was sitting under tranny. I made it home no problem (about 10 miles, all interstate, drove 80-85MPH). No shifting problems, no noises, nothing. Shifts better than normal actually.

You can see there's fluid in the pics. Here's the run down of the day.

Drove about 60-65 miles this morning, then it sat at work for 9 hours. This morning, during the 60 mile adventure, I heard a noise (ping sound) that could have been the metal shooting off and hitting something. I smelled a burning smell for a few minutes, but it went away. Wasn't sure if it was me or the car in front of me. I noticed it enough to watch the edges of the hood for smoke. It was pouring outside, so I never looked under the hood. This happened about half way through the 60 mile drive.

 

Oooo, dat no good, lol.

That was likely caused by a peice of the pressure plate flying off and going through the case.

The odd thing is, if you are leaking gear oil (are you SURE its gear oil? I'm sure you know it's distinctive sulfuric smell), whatever flew out the bell housing must have put a hole in the input side of the trans (where the oil is held).

So if you are in fact leaking gear oil, you need to pull the trans off and see how bad the damage is.

Is that a hairline crack I see running from the hole over in front of the shift lever spline?

Definately looks like gear oil is spraying from the hole onto engine components; probably got on the exhaust manifold and caused the burning smell you experienced.

Sorry for the bad news.

 

I just put a white trash bag under it so I can tell where exactly it's dripping from. Can't tell yet, because it's dripping onto the support brace and trickling down from there. But yes, it does appear to be dripping fluid. I guess that's a good sign... it means it's not running dry.

There doesn't appear to be any fluid at or around the hole, nor on the exhaust manifold. Fluid under the tranny and at the front of the support brace as shown in the pics.

Sounds like I need to go prowling for a new transmission.... anyone got one cheap?

 

that hole itself isnt a big deal.. but there has to be a WHOLE nother problem for it to be leaking fluid..

the area where that hole is has NO fluid going through it, which makes me really wonder.

if part of the PP or disk blew up, you should notice it while driving. and for the one bigger hole, it seems like it would make a significant difference in the way it drove/sounded if part of the system broke off.

something else entirely would have to have caused the hole in the transmission where the fluid is.. very strange.

 

I took the bumper off, ran the car for a few minutes, noticed a slight, slow drip of fluid coming from near the firewall, but it was dripping from the support brace. The underside of the car is wet (it's been raining all day) so I'll wait til tomorrow to try to trace it down.

With my head under the car while it was running, there was more noise coming from the tranny than usual... maybe it's because there's a hole there now letting more noise escape, or maybe it's from a chip off of the pressure plate / clutch.

 

ok a piece of heavy duty anatomy speared through the aluminum skull of your transmission and you're not the least bit scared of putting your own head near it while it's running? scared.gif

man that's definitely from the auto-manual swap. don't know what could have gone wrong. perhaps something with the clutch not opening all the way?? seemed like you really had it perfect there for a few. sorry to hear the bad news.

 

^^ lmao.gif

Now I don't wanna buy your car..... nana.gif

I've never seen anything like that before....Its kind of impressive if you sit back and think about it....

 

$800 and a weekend and it'll be back to normal. What if I drop the price $800, will you come pick it up in time for NOPI Nationals? I'll let you drive it to Atlanta....


I actually thought of that while I was down there... but I was more scared standing in front of it, looking at the clutch spinning thousands of RPM waiting for another chunk to come through that hole and pierce my skull.

 

Haha, thats a real good point.

Dude, i bet since your car is still running fine, it was probably a pp bolt that came off at highway speeds and kicked your bellhousings ass.

I know it can drive normally because i had 2 pp bolts missing at one point (long story) and it drove fine, just didnt have quite as much gripping power (about as much as stock). If you just lost one, you probably would never notice.

the leak may just be something unrelated, maybe, maybe not

 

assuming the leak is unrelated and stops.... what do I do about having a huge open hole on the top of my tranny?!? I don't want anything to fall in there and mess everything up more. How do I patch a quarter size hunk of metal?

oh, btw... I found half of the 'hole' sitting on top of the transmission. It looks like the left half. On the 'inside' side, you can see where something chipped it as it tore through the casing.