Highmile

I have a '92 Civic VX with the 5sp manual S20 Transmission. This is actually a used trans that I put in 3 years ago to replace the original that had the same problem. How tough is it to change the bearings in the trans? The main shaft and whatever others that are in there... I'm certain that the noise I'm hearing is not the flywheel bearing or the clutch release (i'll replace those too of course) because I only get the noise while driving or when the car is in nutral with the foot off the pedal (clutch engaged). Should I just have a shop do it or should I just "throw it in the gutter and go buy another"?

Provocateur

If you only get it with the pedal out, it is the throwout bearing. Does the noise immediately go away when you depress the clutch pedal? If so, your throwout bearing is toast.

civicburner

I had a simialr problem once with my tranny. It only happened when the clutch was engaged(foot off pedal). It was the case bearing, and of course the only way to realize that is buy opening the whole tranny. It costs way too much money in labor, so IMO junk the tranny if this is the case.

Highmile

The throwout bearing only spins when the pedal is pressed in. So I would only hear noise in the opposite circumstance from what I described, not how you said.

Provocateur

The throwout bearing is always spinning.

When you depress the clutch, it puts a load on it and will quiet it down if it squeaks with the pedal out.

The main question is: when the clutch is pressed, does the sound immediately go away, or go away a few seconds later? That would be a way to determine if the throwout bearing is bad, or if something internally in the tranny is bad.

Highmile

The noise is very noisy with foot off the pedal. When I push the pedal to the floor, The noise fades to nothing very fast. Seems to me that if the throwout bearing spins the most with the greatest amount of stress on it with the pedal pushed in... I would get the most noise with the pedal pushed in, not with my foot off the pedal.

The thing of it is... I know I have to take the transmission off one way or the other. I know that once I get it off, I'm going to replace the Throwout Bearing (whether it's worn or not), Pilot bearing (whether it's worn or not), clutch, I'll have the flywheel resurfaced... etc.... My question remains. If when I take the transmission off, and I find that when I turn the input shaft, I get noise... How hard is it to replace the bearings in there?

Thank you for your knowlegable reply. (if you don't know, please don't reply). Thanks.