And thats what that strange noise was:


I had been hearing a nasty metal/gravel grinding noise randomly, only when leaving work (not my house), only when the engine was cold, and only when slipping the clutch a lot. It was too random to really nail down. That started a few months after installing the new clutch and persisted a couple months. Then, I started to miss shifts. I figured that I am probably just retarded and need to pay more attention when shifting. Then, one day in the middle of rush hour traffic, I couldn't shift into any gear. With the clutch pedal in, the engine would stall when I tried to force the shifter into any gear. Once it did stall, I could easily go into each gear (that pissed me off). As the lights turned green, I just had to push the clutch pedal to the wall, rev it up, and force that shifter until the transmission screamed and finally went into gear. Upshifting and downshifting still resulted in a nasty metal grinding noise, but could be done. It was embarassing as I got caught by light after light.

I will admit that the cause was likely improper loc-tite prep. I was distracted by taking pictures and notes for a "how to" article. I used loc-tite, but didn't clean the threads in the crank (I normally clean with isopropyl alchohol and blow out with compressed air). I didn't remember this until after I had spent two hours getting the transmission to line up to the engine (my first time with a non-modular install). At that point, I said "screw it, it'll be fine". It wasn't fine and I am the one who got screwed. I just thought I would post this so that others might learn from my mistakes.

Corbin
'95 ESI-T

Now with more power and fewer leaks



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