The First Signs of Trouble

Betsy ran pretty good for the first three weeks of our brand new relationship. I learned to drive manual with her and we were really spending quality time bonding together every single day. I drove her to a few places around town, and I felt it was time to take her on a bit of a longer trip on the freeway.

As I was driving her around the block to get ready there was a terrible grinding, banging sound and as I got her back to my house there was loud pop as my heart stopped beating.

I was no expert, but something was definitely terribly, terribly wrong.

As I tried to figure out what went wrong, there were many theories. It was the engine, a pushrod maybe? Something wrong with one of the cylinders? The transmission? The pilot bearing in the clutch?

As I opened up different parts of the engine and looked at them like I knew what I was doing, I decided with the guidance of some pretty knowledgable opinions that it seemed like we needed to look at the transmission up close and personal. So we took that baby outta there.

I immersed myself in YouTube videos about how 3 speed manual transmissions work and how to rebuild them. After approximately 48 hours later I felt ready to tackle the project. I grabbed my wrench and opened up my little baby toploader. It went something like this:

It was glorious.

We noticed that the front input bearing was cracked and the ball bearings inside had chewed up the cage that was holding them apart. Which meant that there were shards of this metal cage just chillin’ in my tranny which, for the newbies out there, is not so great.

This is how my first ever car project ended up being a transmission rebuild.

Proud mom.