I really need some help identifying a noise in my '89 Civic si. Originally, it developed a noise that could best be described as a purring, but with the rythm of a ratchet ratcheting. It did this in the first 3 gears and while accelerating. I put it on jackstands and used a stethoscope (man I could use a spell checker!) and foudn that the noise was coming from the transaxle, which has 211k on it. Since it did it in the lower gears and not in 4th, and concluded that it must be a problem with the countershaft in the transaxle. This is my daily driver and can't be down for long, so instead of repairing it I bought a used trans and this past weekend swapped them.
Unfortunately, it still makes the same noise, only different. Now it isn't as consistent, sometimes doing it under decelleration, sometimes during light acceleration, and now it does it in 4th gear also. IN addition, sometimes it is much louder than other times. I jacked up one side and then the other so that I could spin only one tire and the noise seems independent of which tire is spinning, thus ruling out a half shaft or wheel bearing.
It seems unlikely that I'd get two transaxles with this problem, although I suppose it's possible. The guy I bought it from said it worked fine when he took it out of the car, and a friend of mine vouches for him.
Any ideas? I'm at a loss to explain it.
Sorry for the long post. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Jim

 

Input shaft bearing sounds bad. If it gets louder on decel that sounds like the culprit. It is a very common failure on those with high miles.

 

FULLTHROTTLE,
Thanks for the information. I'm still a little unsure, because although the second trans makes the noise louder in decel, the first one never made any noise under decel. Do you know what it is that makes an input shaft bearing make more noise under deceleration?
I'm not doubting you, but if I'm going to take the trans out again I want to make sure that when it goes back in it is fixed.
Thanks again,
Jim

 

Buy a bearing & synchro kit and rebuild the tranny that's out right now. ~$200 for the kit (http://www.standardtransmission.com/). Could be the best option to ensure you have a tranny that will last.

 

Im not always 100% right when fixing cars over the internet, but Im fairly certain that is your problem. Your best bet at an accurate diagnosis is to have someone who has built a few of these to drive it and listen to it. NEVER EVER trust an internet diagnosis. Just trying to help. Go buy your local Honda mechanic a beer nad have him drive the car (before the beer prefferably)

 

Don't worry, I wasn't going to hold you to it. Since my time is limited, I always try my best to narrow down problems before I actually start working on the car. In this case, and after I read your post, I got to thinking that if the input shaft bearing was bad, I should be able to hear a difference when I push the clutch pedal in and out, since in neutral the only parts moving with the clutch engaged is the clutch plate and the input shaft. Sure enough, it does make noise, so I'm pretty sure it "at least" has a bad input shaft bearing. The old trans did not make noise under this condition, so I'm assuming for now that it had a different bearing bad. Either way, I've got to take it apart, so I'll probably replace all the bearings.
Thanks for the help.

 

If you wiggle the input shaft and there is any play then you know for sure the bearings are bad. I just swapped out my tranny last week because of similar noises and if I wiggled the input shaft there was some play in it, new tranny had no play whatsoever.