How to be an expert transmission fixer in 20 seconds or less!

[HRH]

So I have a good story here. My co-worker Alex has an '05 Altima with a 5 spd, and calls me up on the day off to tell me his tranny is popping out of first. Seems to be fine everywhere else. Only 90k on his rig, but he rods it a good amount, so I tell him there are about three options. Could be linkage, worn out bearings/transmission issues, or possibly problems with the t/o bearing or something. Most likely the trans needs a rebuild.

 

This is sight unseen, so he calls a few places, I call a few places. Cheapest option is to rebuild the tranny he has, which means moving my newly resurrected Sentra out of the garage and putting his in for some tranny yanking fun. He got back from his days off today and said he took it to a local transmission guy in the valley who drove it and "just couldn't figure it out", but it might be a linkage problem. And they suggested he go off to another transmission place that specialized in manuals. Basically their "awesome master tech" sounded like a nimrod to me.

 

Fast forward to the end of the day, get done with cores and defects, Alex finishes the end of day stuff. So we walk out to our rigs and Alex is pissy about the cost of all the shit we have to do and I'm like you know what, let me fiddle with it here because I haven't even touched it yet. First thing I erroneously notice is the clutch is too hard (I forgot it's the big 3.5 liter 6, feels like the clutch on my uncle's old Mustang Cobra, wicked hard), but go to put it in first and it just won't go. Halfway, kicks out when you let the clutch off. 2-5 feel fine. So I turn the car off. Same problem in first.

 

Now, I'm sure Datzenmike would know, if the cars off and you can't get it into first, but you can get it into all the other gears, it's a linkage problem (or internal synchro fork). So the hood is already up as I was looking at the slave to see if it was moving sufficiently. It was. Alex also noticed he was missing the little cover to his fuse box near the battery.

 

I go back to the engine bay after feeling 1st gear and tell Alex to try and put it in first again so I can watch the linkage because it just plain doesn't feel right. Something is binding. Something black and plastic. Wedged between the mount and the swing arm the moves the clutch fork. Something like the cover to a fusebox. So I tell Alex to put it back in neutral and extract the cover, with a big dent in the bottom where it was wedging.

 

ASIAN TRANNY FIXER FOR LIFE!!!! :D I couldn't stop laughing. Goes back to the old adage, "The simplest answer is usually the right one."

[KELMO]

Sounds like monies saved for Alex.

 

Edit: Well, guess he might need to replace that fuse box cover

[moparvwfreak]

LMFAO!!!! thats funny as hell. dumbasses at the trans shop couldn't figure that out???

[Hardwyre]

LMFAO!!!! thats funny as hell. dumbasses at the trans shop couldn't figure that out???

 

No, they did. They were just hoping he'd leave the car so they could charge him $1500 to put the lid back on the fuses.

[HRH]

The funny part was I didn't even drive it to figure that out. And I think the other tech was dumb since he sent him to another shop. Apparently that shop mainly did automatics, but failed to tell Alex that before telling him to come down.