For the past few months my 87 GL has had some kind of drivetrain rattle. For a while it had a little vibration under acceleration from 0-10 MPH, but that went away as it got warmer (and I changed the gear oil too)

 

It almost sounds like little ball bearings in a coffee can gently banging around.

 

Well... today I just HAD to have fun... launched in low range, redlined the first 3 gears... well the rattle is a little louder now...

 

Keep in mind this is the original tranny with 312,900 miles on it....

 

So... I may have toasted my tranny a little more than it was toasted this morning.

 

Any other things down there that could be rattling?? My guess is some bearing or something in the transmission is bad or maybe a U joint or something, most likely the bearing though...

 

Thoughts?

 

I may be posting in the marketplace for a replacement soon if it ends up getting louder or vibrating again.

it almost sounds like it could be the cat coming apart inside the housing and bouncing around inside. You might want to crawl under the car and start tapping on stuff with a hammer or a large screwdriver

You mean the honeycomb in the cat coming out?? I suppose thats possible... not the heat shield though cause that fell off a long time ago... now that I know how weld maybe I'll build a new one someday....

 

On a better note, it made the 100 miles of on the job driving no problem today... very little noise.

 

Had a little rattle and vibration this morning taking shannon to work, but it was a cold morning... after it warmed up it seemed fine... so the tranny is cool for now... but I still gotta keep an eye on it. (checked fluid today, its still clean and full)

I thought I heard somewhere that pinging, or detonation, can sound like a can of marbles. That would be on acceleration too I think. Probably of base here. Just thought I'd mention it. I could be wrong.

Pyro

Hmmm good point... it does it under coasting, as well as under power, but maybe I'll try a tank of 89 octane and see what happens...

I have a similar problem but it sounds like bad CV's, the only catch is that the CV's are only a month old.

 

The sound is worse when the car is cold, and its realy bad when I take a corner under power, but i can notice a vibration when driving nearly straight, and the noise varies with car speed.

 

I had a look and noticed that there is a bit of play between the DOJ and the splined shaft from the tranny. could this be it

well if it was your tranny, you'd see signs of wear in the gear oil and maybe some metal shavings on the dipstick if it had something to do with it breaking a syncro or something. I doubt highly its the tranny. It sounds a lot like the exhaust having some issues like yes, the honeycomb in the cat coming loose. I know the Legacy Andrew had, had a bad resonator in it so it had a bad rattling sound to it as well...

I had a deep vibration in my suby a while ago. It came on under acceleration. It ended up being my driveshaft was bad.

I would have suspected the heat shields on the exhaust pipe. I have always got rocks or pieces of rust rattleing around in them. They only made noise during a shift too?

 

That was easy to trouble shoot by pounding on various points on the underside.

 

Have you isolated the noise to the tranny and not to the exhaust?

 

Humm,

Glenn

82 SubaruHummer

01 Forester

No I havnt isloated the noise to be either drivetrain or exhaust related.

 

I have new CV's though.

 

I am guessing its either internal to the tranny, the driveshaft, or the cat making the noise though.

 

I wont even start with the right rear brake/bearing assy.... (nasty noise on left turns) thats unrelated though... and the whole trailing arm is getting swapped when I switch to disk brakes.

We have the same problem in our 84 GL, my son crawled under it yesterday while I was changing the oil in the Dynasty. He said there was a "pipe" like deal in the tranny that wa moving around when he grabbed ahold of it.............Im gonna crawl under it tomorrow and have a look myself will use a hammer too to try and isolate it more. The nois happens at idle, under acceleration and uner deceleration. Im hoping its nothing really major though, but it could be, the cars been in a garage for three years and after my son bought it was the first time it was ever driving since 2002 so its kinda expected to have bumps and rattles and groans. Will check though and see what I find .

Does it make more noise in 4wd? If so I vote for bad U-joints on rear-center drive shaft. I've had that happen once.

New driveshaft.... it already broke afew months ago

 

The parting out is starting Tuesday.... probably gonna at least pull the heads off the engine to resell if they look good.... probably will just keep the engine (block) in the car as scrap weight.