Problem with T5............

Tacos88gt5.0 said:

Okay I recently bought a 1988 GT 5.0 and when I bought it the tranny was whinning in all gears but 4th.

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Common problem in T-5's. It's usually caused by Mainshaft scoring from running low on tranny fluid. No real way to fix it without replacing the mainshaft and any associated bearings that may be scored. It should be loudest in the lowest gears (1st and reverse) and get quieter the closer to 4th you get with no noise in 4th at all.

As for what you broke? Well hard to say without pulling the tranny apart. T-5 rebuilding is very easy. It's probably the easiest type of manual tranny to rebuild do to it's simple design.

Tacos88gt5.0 said:

Well, since I am going to have to rebuild this is there anything I can do to make the tranny any stronger to be able to hold up? Also one more question. I have a friend that has a T-5 and it is really hard to get into 2nd gear and if you do get it in it is hard to get it out. He said he would sell it to me for $50 and he thinks that it is only a syncro that has gone bad or something like that. Would it be smart to buy that one and fix it if that is what is wrong and save up to build a stronger T-5?

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Well you can upgrade to the 90-93 gearset. That will increase your torque capacity from 275 to 300 ft-lbs. It's gonna cost you like 300 for the parts though.

As for your buddy's tranny. could be a broken shift fork ($30) or it could be a bad synchro. The thing is synchros are made up of a lot of parts. The cheap and easy peices to replace are the blocker rings which are like $20. They line up the gear and synchro slider and when they wear you can get grinding. Thing is sometimes there is physical damage to the dog teeth on the gear that the slider engages and the sycnrho slider. I just replaced these parts on a t-5 due to bad grinding going into 2nd gear. Cost of new parts? $85 for slider, $80 for sycnrho, $20 for blocker rings. I also needed to replace the mainshaft in this trans due to whining in every gear but 4th. It was scored badly where it contacts the input shaft. Cost of new mainshaft is $250.

I ended up paying $130 for all those parts buy buying good used parts. It's good to have a few spare T-5's sitting around to rob parts from.

If your friend's T-5 is from a 90-93, it may be worth it to buy for $50 and then rebuild it with parts from your T-5. Keep in mind gear ratios are different so you cant use your 2nd gear if you need to. Youll need to buy a 90-93 spec 2nd. But you can use your sycnrho slider and shift forks.