"The Mothership" - 1998 Civic - Maintenance Log

[ctag]

Today I took the empty half of the transmission over to the shop to try cleaning it up, the grime was a lot more stubborn than I anticipated.

Inside is pretty clean, but there's some metallic grime on the bottom:

Letting it soak in a parts washer:

I'll let it sit overnight and see if things are easier going tomorrow.

 

[Sparked8703]

Wow! This thread is amazing. Awesome job man!

 

[ctag]

Wow! This thread is amazing. Awesome job man!

Thanks!

Well, I couldn't get the transmission case as clean as I wanted with the parts washer, so I dried it off and wrapped it in a plastic bag.

Also, this arrived yesterday:

Hopefully that's most of the stuff I'll need for this rebuild. I'm still trying to decided whether I want to get Hondabond or just Permatex Grey for the RTV...

 

[ctag]

Got the mainshaft broken down. The service manual says to press the gears and bearings off the shaft, but it all just fell off by hand for me, I hope that doesn't indicate too much wear on the press fittings

Removed the shift arm attaching bolt and interlock guide bolt:

Pulled the mainshaft, countershaft, and all forks together:

Tada!

This bearing is the culprit. It caused the scratching sound that instigated this whole rebuild:

Probably at my character limit, gonna end this post here.

 

[ctag]

Checked a few tolerances before giving up and just hoping everything else is still within service spec:

Disassembly:

Everything is in pretty good condition:

That was fun

 

[ctag]

Removed the magnet:

There's a spot for two magnets in the mount.. but only one magnet?! Is that supposed to be like this, or did one of the magnets fall out and get ground to dust in the gears?

 

[ctag]

Got the countershaft disassembled, cleaned, and put back together today. Unfortunately I did it wrong and have to take it back apart soon

Other side of the housing emptied out and cleaned:

Had to rent a bearing puller and slide hammer to get the countershaft end bearing out:

Removing the lock nut:

Disassembled:

Old synchros, they look great to me

The new hub and synchro:

Cleaned everything in a parts washer. One of the sleeves for the needle bearing was seized, and I ended up just leaving it alone.

Reassembled

In the above image, the second bearing from the top didn't get replaced even though I have a replacement in the rebuild kit I'm going to pull it back apart and change that out.

Also, I'm not able to get the new hub to seat and click into a gear by hand. It's being stopped by the new synchro snap rings Does it just need to be broken in? Or is it improperly installed? The old one just had a nice satisfying click and would jump into place.

 

[pmac193]

nice progress!

 

[ctag]

nice progress!

Thanks

I learned some important lessons today. The countershaft came back apart and I found some issues that needs addressing.

The shaft came back apart for two reasons: 1, I had forgotten to install one of the new bearings, and 2, I couldn't get the synchro sleeve to go into 1st or 2nd gear and needed to investigate.

Disassembled again. I don't have a hydraulic press, so I just pick up and drop the end of the countershaft on a piece of wood to get the press-fit pieces free

After getting it all apart, I found that by dropping it, I had rammed the reverse gear synchro sleeve into the synchro rings and bent the lower one.

This happened because I'd installed the sleeve incorrectly. It turns out that the hub's inside teeth aren't uniform, and some of them have little lips that clip over the snap ring. Note the two deeper wells and longer teeth at the very top of the hub in this picture:

Also in the picture above, see how it's possible to accidentally fit the sleeve such that those longer teeth fit into the big open rectangle slots instead of the deeper grooves if the sleeve is turned 60 degrees.

Here's a side view where you can see that two of the reverse gear's inner teeth are taller and have grooves.

Here's a picture of the synchro. See how there's a gap in the teeth every 60 degrees? Well, in one gap there's a little block that keeps the synchro seated with the hub, at the other gap there's just empty space for those two deep teeth on the synchro sleep to clip over the synchro snap ring.... So I had installed the sleeve 60 degree off from where it needed to be, and instead of snapping over the ring it just mangled it.

For now I just have one of the old synchro snap rings installed oh well.

 

[ctag]

Next tragedy: the lower friction modifier was installed wrong and got crushed.

It ground nice little divots into the hub it goes with:

I tried bending those tabs back out, but they just fell off. For reference, the upper friction modifier was undamaged:

Now I wait for the replacement to ship...

 

[ctag]

Got the mainshaft cleaned and reassembled today.

Dirty parts:

Clean parts:

The synchros, snap rings, and shift collars all got replaced.

Third gear being reinstalled:

The whole assembly back together:

And tucked into a clean garbage bag to protect it from dust:

Reassembly was pretty easy with this one. For the shift hubs I took a small deadblow hammer and tapped downward around the edge of the hub until it seemed to seat.

 

[mymmeryloss]

Have u checked out Downstar.com? Thats where i got a good majority of my bolts and beauty washers. Tell Frank I sent u!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[ctag]

Have u checked out Downstar.com? Thats where i got a good majority of my bolts and beauty washers. Tell Frank I sent u!

It's a defunct landing page

 

[mymmeryloss]

Lemme see real quick


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[mymmeryloss]

My apologies www.downstarinc.com


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[ctag]

My apologies www.downstarinc.com

Ah, now that's some sexy hardware! I'll keep them in mind, but right now I'm thinking that anything shiny would just look out of place in the engine bay

 

[ctag]

There's no way in hell this transmission rebuild is going to work Got everything buttoned up last week, just to discover the differential shim lying under a box Had to pull the whole transmission back apart and then re-seal it again.

I didn't take any pictures of that agonizing process, but it looked a lot like putting things together the first time, so here's some images of that:

New magnet tray installed:

New countershaft oil guide installed:

Shift rod and shift arm shaft installed:

Differential:

DOH! Have to install the bearings first! Whoops

Bearings in and differential back in place:

 

[ctag]

That mainshaft is a zombie defense weapon of epic (OK, probably mediocre at best) proportions.

Ta-da!

They don't line up.

Back everything out and give it all some contemplation:

After making double-sure that the bearings were all properly seated and whatnot, the shafts line up a little better:

Install the shift arm shaft hardware:

Splash on some Hondabond and crank it all down:

At this point I think there's a fairly large chance that the whole operation is doomed to failure. I don't have the tools or experience necessary to be certain that the rebuild was carried out in an effective manner, and I simply chose to ignore many of the tolerance and spec checks listed in the service manual (because what would I do if they failed? I can't afford any more parts). I think that's OK though, just getting some hands on experience with the guts of this thing, and really coming to appreciate and somewhat understand how a manual transmission works is worth it. If this thing blows up then I'll have to start saving up to get a professionally rebuild replacement c'est la vie.

 

[XpL0d3r]

Let us know how it goes once you get it back together. Hopefully it does not blow up though lol. If you still have issues with it, maybe there's a junkyard near you or a solid Craiglist find you can come about for a new transmission.

 

[ctag]

Let us know how it goes once you get it back together. Hopefully it does not blow up though lol. If you still have issues with it, maybe there's a junkyard near you or a solid Craiglist find you can come about for a new transmission.

It's happening today Yeah, I'll probably hit up a pick-a-part or something if this doesn't work out.

Also, I just finally located the source of all of the slop in my shift linkage, it's the RR bushing that connects the shift knob to the linkage (part no 54107-SA0-010) Now to decide whether to fix it or wait and get a whole new shift linkage..