JFanaselle

Well, I'm officially screwed. The other day I was driving, and when I was turning into a driveway, I shifted down into first, and when I went to accellerate away, I heard a loud pop noise, followed by instant grinding and locking up. Tomorrow I'll pull the tranny out...but I want some input here. First of all.....the transmission has been making a small and slight ticking sound everytime the wheels are spinning, unless I'm on the throttle. The ticking gets faster as the wheel speed increases, but it didn't matter what gear I was in or if the clutch was depressed or not or if I was in neutral, it still happened. When I would accelerate during a turn (usually to the left) it would get horrible and loud until the turn was complete. Now when I put the car in the air and spin the driver side wheel, the passanger side one spins in the same direction (shouldn't it spin backwards?), and when I spin the passanger side one, it just makes a loud clicking and grinding sound and the driver one barely turns (also in the same direction). I drained the fluid, and it was full of fine metal dust. Anyways...long story short...anyone know how royally screwed I am? There's a salvage yard in Arkansas that will sell me a tranny with 15K on it with a 90 day warranty for $450 shipped. That sounds like a pretty good deal to me...any input would help. I think the problem is the spider gears (the differential?) and that it would be more expensive to repair than $450.

Farsyde

i would get yourself a new tranny but 450 bux??? I think they are overcharging on that. Find a U-pull-it yard and itll prolly only cost 200. The tranny should still be under warrantee according to your sig.

JFanaselle

no, it's not under warranty. The car has 82K on it now, and I bought it used (90 day warranty only). I think $450 isn't bad, and he's warrantying it for me. If you guys think that's steap, I'll check around. By the way, I've pulled it apart, the spider gears are thrashed. I'll clean it up and post pictures so everyone will drive their cars nice (unlike me!)

Gregersonsalvag

That ticking noise was actually your spider gears on the differential. Its actually a relatively common thing on the G5M and G15m Transmissions. Don't bother fixing your old transmission because by now there is probably so much metal in there you can make a 6 gear out of it. If you do take it apart and find there is not very much metal in there. You could probably fix up the differential spider gears for 150 bucks in parts since they are only 50 a piece. Although I'm willing to bet the gears will probably still be in good condition. I'm not sure about the syncros and the shift forks though since it is common they lock up shortly after the differential starts pumping metal into the tranny.

When you fill the transmission fluid up again on the used tranny Used either Redline MTL fluid or Royal Purple Syncromax fluid. I think its a 3.5 quart system(or at least that is how it is on the zx2 which uses the G5M which is basically same thing). So buy 4 quarts. The new fluid will shift through the gears better and have less problems.

JFanaselle

yeah, when I pulled it apart, the spyder gears are totally thrashed. There's a ton of metal everywhere else and every single gear is thrashed in some way or another. The magnet at the bottom of the housing is nothing but a huge ball of metal chunks and shavings. I think I'll just pick up that used one for $450.

Gregersonsalvag

If you want to be cheap about it you can pickup a G5M off a recent model escort coupe. Swap your bellhousing and you should be set.


Also look on this Website and you will find an entire list of places that sell the transmission to your car.

carguycw

1.6L Proteges use the F25M-R, not the G15M-R. The F25 from a 1.6L car has a different bellhousing than an F25 from a 1.8L car (the 1.8L is dimensionally identical to the 2.0L), so I don't think this swap will work unless an F-type bellhousing will bolt onto a G-type tranny.

However, if you're willing to do a bellhousing swap, you can install the tranny from a 99-00 1.8L car using your 1.6L bellhousing and you'll get a 4.11:1 final drive ratio.

Gregersonsalvag

He has an 00 protege which I thought used the G15M-r Trans. Oh well you can't win em all. My mistake and thanks for the correction.

JFanaselle

Pics like I promised:

Spyder Gears munched up

More munching

Other munched up gears

More munching

The magnet in the housing covered in metal

Think maybe I was a little too hard on it? I'm going to drive my car like an old lady from now on, no more hard takeoffs.

carguycw

Driving gently always helped, but it's possible that the problem was caused by the previous owner. Many people don't realize that manual trannies HAVE oil. Needless to say, these folks usually don't change it too often.

fossil boy

Well, if he suspects he was driving it hard, then he probably was!!!
and,
besides gear dope, manual trannies also require use of the clutch...

toucci

manual trannies are way more prone to getting abused than autos unless the auto driver hits the gas and brake at the same time while still, burning up the torque converter

JFanaselle

well the small ticking didn't start until a few thousand after I started driving it. I"m pretty sure that during one of my many showing off burnouts or one of my clutch-dumping takeoffs, I took a small chip out of one of those spyder gears. It probably got a little bigger and bigger (as I was continuing to drive bad and take off horribly) until it finally took off a chunk which flew into everything else and slaughtered all of the gears. The spyder gears are really only subject to damaging impact during hard takeoff's, or accellerating hard while turning.

Gregersonsalvag

There is a dude at zxtuner.com who is working on getting stronger differential for the G5m transmission on the zx2 which is basically the same as the G15m by using the differential from the Ford Escape. The only problem though is you do have to buy new axles and I don't think there will be room for an lsd after that. For more info click HERE

Jas00x

Nice work!!
I'm glad to see someone else doing the same thing that happend to me (and has pictures to show off!)
In my case- the motormounts were shot causing excess wheel hop and trashing the differential.
I have a 2000 ES 1.8L. I'm at 84K miles and I'm on my 3rd set of motormounts and 2nd tranny (around 42K). Ever since I found out the motormount problem (I keep an eye on it on a regular basis) and take care not to get too much wheel hop when driving, the regular tranny has worked well. BUT a Limited slip would be nice AWR motormounts are definately in my future


Later