I have just replaced my Flywheel (light weight alum), ACT clutch, Pressure Plate, new release fork, pilot bearing and throw out bearing. Now when I let the clutch out in neutral I get a loud throw out bearing/pilot bearing rattling noise. It goes away as soon as I put the clutch in.

I have read that some people grease these up before putting them in, however I did not. Could that be the reason why my new bearings are making this much noise?

Back Ground: I replaced the clutch and everything else because I was in there at the time. The motor was pulled for a rebuild and I pulled the tranny to. The clutch was not slipping but past 50% wear and the throw out bearing was not making this much noise before.

Thanks

 

Yes, you have to grease the pilot bearing up. That's why there's an oil seal that's installed right after the pilot bearing - keeps the grease in there.

The throwout bearing is sealed and doesn't need lube, but you do have to lube the movement points that it rides on.

Dale

 

I have the same noise, and I did grease everything when I did the same job as you just did. I did the job 2 years, and 7K miles ago. Everything is still working fine, and the noise is still there. It's a little annoying, but everything does what it is supposed to, so I am not concerned about it any more.

 

Since it makes noise with the clutch engaged, but not disengaged, it sounds more like a trans input shaft brg (or other brg). The pilot brg should not make any noise with the clutch engaged, since there is no relative motion. The TO brg could rattle with the clutch engaged (pedal released), but it's not under any load in this condition, and nominally not rotating.

 

The tranny makes no other noises and does not whine/rattle while in any gear.

Sounds like I may have to drop the tranny and add some grease and then watch, listen and forget about it. I guess I was hoping it would break in some and the noise would go away.

 

If you were creative maybe you could do it through the inspection cover on the bellhousing? Since it's a fair size hole and you can disconnect the throw out bearing from the wire ring to gain some room maybe you could put some grease on a stick or something and get it in there?

FWIW my car had always made a low growling in neutral with the clutch out, even after replacing the original clutch, pilot and release bearing. The engine came out recently to fix a front cover leak and once back in the growling is louder. The clutch, release bearing and fork are fresh. The pilot bearing was replaced when the engine was pulled just to be sure it wasn't screwed up upon re-install. The car is now much noisier in neutral and nothing changed other than removing and installing the engine. Everything feels and operates fine; I can't find any symptoms other than increased noise.

I suspect a tranny bearing too but that doesn't explain how the noise instantly got worse just from pulling the engine. I would think if a bearing were that bad that perhaps I could detect vibration in the shifter and even with the **** removed and gingerly moving the shifter in and out of gear while really studying the feel of it I cannot detect anything.

 

I had the same noise symptoms (growling noise in neutral, clutch out, cold car), and recently rebuilt my transmission. I'm currently reinstalling the tranny, so soon I'll be able to say if I fixed it. I'm with DaveW on this one - input shaft bearing.

My t/o and pilot bearings looked fine but I replaced them anyway. The input shaft fits over the output shaft inside the gearbox - there is a little bearing just like the pilot bearing between them. Mine showed some minor spalling on those bearing races. That was the only bearing where I could find anything wrong in my tranny and clutch. Fortunately the contacting faces of the input and output shafts were still good. Wait too long, and you'll wear into them and need to replace those at a few hundred bucks each. Apparently this bearing commonly fails. Sadly, it is the deepest bearing in the entire transmission, no shortcuts.

I noticed that even reassembled the input shaft can wiggle a little bit - I suspect that depending on the precise alignment of the engine/tranny, it may have more or less room to wiggle and make noise. So your new engine may be bolted in such a way to allow slightly more rattle room. Regarding Damon's thought about feeling it - it's a small bearing and the input shaft (the part with wiggle) is much lighter than the countershaft or main output shaft. Also, the shifter forks aren't attached to the input shaft - only the clutches which are on the mainshaft. So it would be hard to feel.

I say you should grease the pilot if you haven't already - that is very important. You won't be able to access it with the tranny bolted in - you'll need to detach the transmission to grease either the inner race on the input shaft or the cage of the pilot. I don't see any shortcuts to that, I'm afraid. The good news is you won't need to take the tranny down - just detach the t/o bearing and slide the tranny back.

 

If you do drop the tranny again make sure you use the correct grease. Not sure what it is since I haven't done the clutch job on my own RX-7, but on my integ it was moly paste (~$25 from summit racing).

 

Thanks Guys for your input.

The pilot bearing was greased up before I took it out of the package. True the grease is not as thick as I would have expected but that one has some. The Throw Out bearing did not. I'll try some tricks to get grease in there as DamonB suggested.

I still not convinced it’s the input shaft due to the noise just popping up after a new clutch/hardware install, but we'll see.


Thanks Again.

 

That makes sense dgeesaman because the noise sounds to me exactly like a bearing in the transmission but I couldn't explain how removing/installing the engine would change that. I've been preparing myself to go ahead and buy a used tranny and rebuild it so I guess that's the route I'll end up taking if you report back that the tranny rebuild cured the growl.

 

x605p747R1

Most TO brgs are greased and sealed when they are assembled. Are you saying that this one was not? I'd find that surprising.

 

Yes, this one was sealed and greased. It was right out of the box. There was a light grease on the inner race. I wasn't aware that people placed extra/more grease on the race when they installed it.

I pulled both the pilot bearing and throw out bearing right out of the boxes (brand new with the clutch package) and installed them. I added no extra grease.

 

I put some extra grease on the shaft, and on the pilot bearing. It was still louder than with the old parts. I used OEM Mazda replacement parts. There didn't appear to be a way to grease the TO bearing.

I don't think that you have a problem

 

x605p747R1

Then your TO brg is OK as it is. The pilot brg, however, MAY (some are properly lubed, some are not) have come with only enough lube to keep it from rusting in the package. It would be safer to relubricate it with, say, a good moly (molybdenum-difulfide) grease. Don't overload it with grease, though, since excess grease can be forced out past the seal and get on the clutch surfaces, possibly ruining the clutch.

 

Most likely the trans input shaft bearing. They are know for this.
John