Drivetrain T5 Gnashing Sounds, Gear Run Out Noise

This started today on the way home from work, doesn't sound too good.... basically sounds like input shaft or something inside trans grating metal to metal but only when car is moving and most prominent during decel while in gear...... if anyone could give me a hint what I'm up against I would appreciate it. It's a DD car I need to get to work in, and already have a building list of things that need attention, seems I can't keep up with them.

Mustang5L5 said:

Most likely a tooth has sheared off the input shaft or countergear. Only way to tell is to open the trans up

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I have an alternate theory, that may very well may be a much cheaper and ez solution. 3 weeks ago I replaced the trans oil with royal purple synthetic Mercron.....after browsing threads for hours last nite I ran across a few that noted the synthetic tends to make the backing on syncros stick and rub the gears.... Have you heard that one before?? I'm going to have a friend that has a trans shop swap out the liquid gold ($20 a qt)for conventional and see if that helps...anything beats dropping trans when its my only available transpo at the moment.

Mustang5L5 said:

It's worth a shot, but metal on metal is never a good sound.

It's hard to diagnose sounds over the Internet, but I pulled a t-5 apart not too long ago that had a metal on metal sound but shifted fine. Ended up being a good number of teeth on the input shaft and counter gear were sheared off.

Running synthetic fluids in the t-5 sometimes cause grinding in all the gears due to being too "slippery". It wouldn't have any impact on a constant gnashing sounds.

Hate to have you tear apart your trans based on a quick online diagnostic of a vague sound, but other than fluid change, not much else you can do short of crackin the trans open. Sorry

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Yeah I know, but unfortunately I'm moving right now, waiting on new place to be ready, staying in hotel and have no where (or tools)to work on it, not to mention I need it running for work atm. Took it to a friend who has a trans shop and let him drive it, he thinks the cluster gear has chipped teeth...he said drive it till it takes a crap, he can get me a rebuilt t5 for $650 out the door.....wish I wasn't stuck in a tight situation or I would go for a T56 no problem....but thats around $5500+ with all the needed parts, and then doing the physical part which must be a bit** seeing as how heavy they are, not to mention going into a car they were not made for.....could forsee a major PITA happening......lol

Finally after continuing to drive to work 5 days a week, after coming back yesterday, it finally gave way...there was lotsa grinding progressively getting worse as time went by but oh well. My question is, a friend with a trans shop can get a rebuilt unit and install for under 1k, I'm sort of in a financial bind at the moment and have to toss all aspirations of wanting to do the T-56 swap out the window (especially with the near 5k price tag). Am I going to be doing this again next year, not knowing the quality of said rebuilt unit? My motor is quite a bit stronger then stock, and with the 4.10's I tend to see more problems if replacing with a generic rebuilt unit? Anyone else have experience with this? Also anyone with a T-56 swap that could let me know all the pitfalls if there were any? I see theres a few places offering the complete conversion minus the clutch. Thanks guys