If anyone has a good tranny or good center diff. that is not installed could you do me a favor and check something for me. I'm having some weird issues with my tranny or TC or rear end and can't figure out what the cause is. When the car is up on jack stands and you release the clutch quickly in any gear, the whole drive train jumps around and makes this clattery sounds, kind of like all of the differentials and spider gears, ring and pinions are clanking around. As soon as the wheels get moving after the clutch is fully release, everything is perfect, car drives 100% normal, it's only when you take of slow with a quick clutch release. Or if you bog the car down say doing 35 mph in 5th gear, the drivetrain starts jumping around.


What I'm looking for is how much play is there supposed to be on the center diff output shafts (the two shafts that connect inside the TC/front diff. The inner of the two or the smaller one on mine flops around about a 1/4" I'll try and get some pics or video later tonight if need be.

 

There is quite a bit of slop in the drivetrain. If you are talking about rotating around 1/4" before everything engages that doesn't sound crazy. More than likely it's the spider gears inside the center diff.

If you're taking off slow you should be slipping the clutch and you shouldn't be in 5th gear at 35mph anyway.

 

There is not a lot of "slip" to a 6 puck clutch, and the 5th gear 35mph thing mostly just a test, not a normal driving habbit. Maybe 45 mph in 5th though. Either way something is def not right. I rebuilt the tranny, and installed an 04 RS LSD at the same time so it could be the LSD locking up for some weird reason. When I pulled the LSD out last night to inspect there was some brass colored flakes inside the lsd carrier. Opened up the LSD and everything looked Ok from what I can tell but I don't really know much about the OEM lsd. All the gears seemed to be intact. As for the center diff.. I had inspected all the spider gears before putting the tranny back together, all were in great shape. I noticed the issue about 25 miles after putting the car all back together, no launches, nothing to crazy for beat runs. Was backing up and heard what sounded like the exhaust banging around. Which turns out to be the drivetrain hoping around.

 

A gear type lsd shouldn't "chatter"

It's normal to get shavings in the tranny.

 

Well no the gears should not.. but if something was locking up.. it might cause everything to bind and the drive train to suck up that shock give off the sounds of chatter or clanking what have you.

The gold shavings were in the TC not the tranny. There is no brass that I know of in the TC, inside the diff/lsd carrier specifically. If I typed tranny, it was a mistake.

 

IMO it's pretty normal to have some drivetrain "clanking" at low speeds when back up and changing direction (ie reverse to forward). If you have a quick engaging clutch (like a 6 puck) then some noise is going to happen.

As for gold shavings the only thing in the tranny that color are the blocking rings. That's it. Most likely your blocking rings are breaking in or you have something else going on and the shavings are in the fluid. FYI the tranny fluid is shared and is inside the front diff. It is separated via seals to keep the hypoid oil away from the gear oil.

 

Interesting.. I did not know the front diff shared the tranny oil. Thanks for that info. I wondered why I had red oil in the diff when I put Diaqueen in the TC.