When I get my tranny out tonight or tomorrow I won't have to replace any gears in my gearbox right? I mean I am replacing clutch disk, pressure plate, and my flywheel along with the throwout bearing, pilot bearing, and transmission front cover and transmission rear seal. On my daily driven 88 GTU N/A stock (Besides these upgraded clutch parts) at 90,000 miles I shouldn't have to touch the inside of my gearbox right?

 

Well, a clutch job is a clutch job - rebuilding a tranny is a whole 'nuther ballgame.

If the tranny doesn't make noise and isn't crunchy, then it's good. There's really no easily serviceable parts in the tranny - you really got to take that sucker apart to work on it. Not for the faint of heart. Hell, I still haven't rebuilt a tranny - I've taken a junker apart, though.

Just do your clutch job and call it a day.

Dale

 

Sounds good but here is the story prompting me to take the tranny apart to begin with though. Long story short = I buy 88GTU N/A w/88,000 miles on it from guy in Lansing Michigan. Drive it back to Tampa FL. Great running till I hit stopped traffic in Macon GA where after passing the accident I try to shift in to 2nd gear from 1st and it wont go in to gear. No grinding no nothin just won't shift in to anything out of neutral. So stuck in neutral I pull over and have it towed to nearest Mazda dealership in Macon. RX-7 guy works it in to gear while off and parked and then turns car on and gives it gas .....now it shifts fine. He claims that it is a bad pilot bearing but that I can drive it to Tampa just being careful though.

I get back home with no problem whatsoever and since then I have run in to that no gear selection problem about 4 times in the span of 10 days.

I have no $$$ for the dealer here to do the job and replace all the parts that should be replaced when opening up the tranny so I am going to do it myself tonight or tomorrow.

From this story and the symptoms described I thought I was safe just fooling around with the clutch and bearings. Problem solved.

I was just hoping to get reassurance from you guys that I won't get this tranny back up in my car and find out that I need to purchase a new gear box.

Thanks guys and may your Rexs live long and prosper!

 

RX-7 transmissions perform at their best using synthetic gear oil. Drain the old oil & check for excess metal on the drain plug magnet. Also the shift lever bushings are a normal wear part that needs replacing every 100000 miles or so.

 

I think it's not a problem in the gearbox - Sureshot is right on too. Might also want to double-check the clutch hydraulics.

Dale

 

Damn you guys are the best! I get nothing but help on this forum.....*starts to tear up* *sniff *sniff....

Thank you guys soooo much for the pointers and I am so glad that I happened upon this RX-7!! I will be posting advice in no time to help others with their Rex probs.

 

you should also look at you shifter bushings, ive seen some that were so bad that it gets stuck in gears

mike

 

Interesting... I do have a short shifter from Mazdatrix sitting in the living room that includes the bushings...maybe I will try that b4 I go ripping open my tranny. That way I may have some more flexibility financially when I actually do the job a week or two later in case I run in to problems(like I always do). \

Thanx for the tip.

 

Well Capn'

A couple weeks ago I did a clutch job on the wife’s 88 n/a. The pilot bearing was gone, as in the needles disintegrated. This caused excessive wear on the input shaft requiring its replacement.

Long story short to replace the input shaft you will need to replace at a minimum the input shaft bearing, the rear counter shaft bearing, the rear main shaft bearing, and the two lock nuts. Any bearing that you must pull off a shaft by pulling on the outer race should be replaced.

The good news is that the bearings are all available at your local bearing supplier. I can sent you the bearing numbers if you need them.

Look at the shift boots. The bottom one on mine was bad, it wasn’t leaking so I didn’t replace it. Well guess what? Bad idea. The parts will be here tomorrow. In the mean time the wife is driving my truck to work. This does not make either of us happy campers.

Best of luck on your clutch job.

Jerry

 

omg omg omg omg that is some bad news......man this is starting to really wear on my nerves....ok before you replaced your wife's pilot bearing did you get a constant noise? Or did you run in to my situation where you just all of a sudden couldn't get in to any gear out of neutral? Dear god I hope that I don't have to replace a bunch of bearings...I am going broke as it is and I just bought the thing lol. Bah, I am not a religious man by far but I think I may say a prayer tonight that when this coming weekend comes along and I drop my tranny that I will run in to some calm waters.

BTW thank you for ur story...better to know what the problem may be rather than get in there and be stumped trying to figure the damn thing out.

 

Capn’

Gee, I didn’t mean to but the fear of god in you! The wife did complain about some funny grinding noises, but by the time I drove the car they were gone. I guess all of the little needles in the pilot bearing were gone by then. There were no problems with shifting. She just flat wore the clutch out. But with 94000 miles the brakes look like new.

I went to Mazda today to get the little rubber shift boot part and they had brought in the wrong part. I can’t fault the parts guy, the Mazda parts books are pretty bad in that area.

If I were you I would pull the shifter boot out this week and see if they need to be replaced. It’s only about a ten minute job. I’ll let you know what the Mazda part number is if and when I find out.

Again, best of luck.

Jerry

 

Hello, I'm Jerry's wife... the RX7 that "just needed a new clutch" is mine... Thought I would give you the WHOLE story about the symptoms I experienced... How quickly they forget! Last fall, I was getting strange grinding noises when shifting from lower gears... then in about the coldest part of the winter there were several times (while trying to get home from a long day at work) that I just flat could NOT get it into second gear. I'd stop, work the stick a bit, say a few unkind words and finally get it into gear. This went on intermittently for a couple months, then finally the shifting problems just stopped, and all the noises went away, so did my nagging. HWAFE (he who always fixes everything) drove my car to the store and discovered the clutch wouldn't even engage when rapidly accellerating (I tried to tell him weeks earlier!) In retrospect, my theory is that all the little pieces of the pilot bearing were causing the grinding, shifting problems and aggravation. When the bearig got ground up into enough small pieces, the problems stopped. But... the gear box was fine!

 

Might want to also check your clutch master and slave cylinders.

 

tranny seal

 

Thanks for the insight Jerry and his significant other. Well I never experienced much grinding and not severe when it did happen so hopefully I haven't destroyed anything yet. As for the shifter bushings, I spose I will put the new ones in b4 I drop the tranny and see what happens. And my clutch engages just fine. I got new seals and a new front tranny cover so I have that covered. According to the documentation on the maintenance done to the car by the previous owner the master cylinder was replaced not more than 8 months ago. I think that the only thing that could need replacing that I don't have parts for is the clutch slave cylinder or the gearbox parts ie...synchros and gears.

I dunno.....Mazda and Proressive Insurance are jerking me around right now trying to replace 2 rims on my passenger side that wer damaged when I swerved out of the way of a fool trying to drive out of a mall parking lot right in front of me while I was doing 40 mph. I ended up hitting a curbed median and destroyed my 2 passenger side rims. Progressive tried to get me refurbished rims 4 times and they messed up the order all 4 times and the rims were not right.

The 88 GTU N/A rims cost $540.00 a piece from Mazda and are chromed steel. I can see my face in them like a mirror........I moaned and complained about the three weeks that my car has been in the shop waiting on rims that they keep messing up and so now they decided to drop a cool 1190.00 on Mazda rims with next day air shipping. Today I may get my car back finally!