hey honda-tech, Ive been having transmission/clutch issues recently (cant figure out which). It all started about a month ago, with a very faint ticking/rattle coming from under the hood. It sounded like a fender or something rattling lightly, and i thought nothing of it. After all, nothing seemed wrong and it wasn't constant.

about 4 days ago i raced an integra, everything went fine, no noticeable performance issues, but after we slowed down the ticking previously described was extremely loud. It only occured when the clutch petal was all the way out, in every gear, even neutral. Even then, it still felt fine.

two days ago I left for work and it was fairly hard to get in gear, and it was getting harder everytime I would shift into a different gear. Eventually, it was impossible to get into gear. it would grind horribly in reverse with the clutch pedal all the way in, and it wouldn't stay in reverse if i let go. 1-5 gear would. not. go. in. period. no grinding or anything, it just wouldn't go in. If i turned off my car, the gears would shift smoothly and perfectly. if the engine was running it was impossible to shift.

I got a tow back to my house and dropped the tranny. the (stage 4) clutch, pressure plate, and 8lb flywheel all look fine. pressing in the clutch pedal moves the hydraulic "pump" by the shift fork, so I assume thats working fine.

I took the tranny apart to see if anything obvious was wrong (keep in mind this is my first time taking apart a honda transmission). there were very few metal shavings (looked as though very small nicks were on a few of the gears, grinding gears i'm guessing?) anywho, all the gears lined up fine and everything moved smoothly. the only thing i thought was out of place was the round ball bearing at the bottom of one of the shafts. in pictures i've seen, the 8 smaller metal ***** are evenly spaced apart and dont appear to be free-moving. mine are free moving and they all bunch up at the lowest point (due to gravity) when i turn the output shaft on the outside of the transmission, it sounds like metal marbles are rolling around in the transmission because of the small metal *****.

could this small ball-bearing be the source of all of my problems? what would cause it? what other culprits could be causing the problem? would you recommend rebuilding the transmission or tossing it? Thanks for any help, hopefully all of this was understood

 

pics.

 

Sounds like the input shaft bearing went bad. Sounds like it is missing the cage if all the bearings are sitting together like that. But yes, pictures would help.