I pulled my tranny out last night, and after moving from under car I found this sitting on the ground under near where the bellhousing mates to the motor. It has clean, OE looking grease on it. Any idea what this is and where it goes?

 

Not sure what that is. It looks just like a plain washer, I'm baffled as to the grease on there.

Dale

 

Yeah I looked and looked and scratched and scratched. Everything else is accounted for and the car seems to be running fine. I’d chalk it up to something random/external that fell through from the top at some point, but that grease bothers me too...

 

Looks to be pretty substantial washer. PPF? Did you pull any switches (1-2 or reverse) off the transmission?

 

Does the PPF use any washers?

I did pull the 1-2 switch accidentally but it had its own copper washer. The backup-light switch (why is it a gear??) has no washer.

 

No, the washers are welded in place from the factory on the PPF

 

The "switch" with the gear is the speedo drive.

There's not many bolts on a recent mazda, using a washer, where it's not captive to the fastener.

Certainly don't recognize it, what's the ID? The likely option, if it's been sitting in bellhousing gunk, somebody could have replaced a flanged bolt with a bolt and a washer at some time in the past - and dropped the washer on replacement. In this case, purposely to annoy someone in the future!

 

Not sure what I was thinking... but obviously no. Sorry.
As for the switches I couldn’t remember for sure. Been a while since I looked and it was the only thing I could think of that might use a washer.

 

I have a box of assorted washers, and this one matches one of the sizes, shapes and finishes exactly. I'm fairly certain that's where it came from.

No idea how it turned up after pulling the tranny, though. Maybe it was dropped from above at some point and was sitting on the top of the tranny. At least it doesn't appears to be something OE that is out of place.