car!

September 27, 2005, 11:08:31 PM

Sometimes I feel like it never ends with this car.

My U-joints were bad so I just replaced them this last sunday, and I put a new seal in the tailhousing of the transmission because it looked like it was leaking. Wasn't sure if that would fix the leak, but the the U-joints were done and I drove the car a little and everything was great.

Now, not 2 days later, I've got some kind of loud buzzing, rattling sound coming from somewhere around the rear of the engine. From the sound of it, it's coming from somewhere around the bellhousing but I can't figure out what the hell it is. It makes the sound when the car is sitting at idle with the clutch in or out. It doesn't really make it as long as you're giving it any throttle at all, but then on engine braking it's pretty loud. My first thought was that something was up against the exhaust, but I checked it and there's nothing loose. I also thought maybe it was coming from the engine, but you can hear it under the car just as loud as you can in the engine bay and it's definitely coming from the rear of the engine, so I've pretty much narrowed it to something in or around the bellhousing, I just have no clue what. It's definitely something rattling against something else but I don't know what. And don't say cat heat shields because my car doesn't have a cat. Nothing seems out of the ordinary

Looks like I'm gonna have to pull the transmission on this thing...besides the aforementioned leak and the new rattling noise, the throwout bearing has been squealing like crazy for the last 2 months or so (and it's got less than 6000 miles on it). Guess I'll be putting this car away fro the winter sooner than I had originally thought. :disappoin