my 5spd tranny has always been a little funny. With 235,000 miles on it i know its not perfect and soon will need to be replaced or to get rebuilt. When coming home form the movies i noticed in first gear i got a weird rattle. It seemed to come from the tranny. At first i thought it was something loose from the vibration but if i rev the engine in nuetral and when driving in any other gear it doesnt make the noise. I looked under the truck, checked for anything loose to make the noise. Im pretty sure its the tranny. Is this a sign that its going bad. It is hard to shift sometimes and in reverse is such a pain to get it in the gear.

 

Every Toyota manual tranny is hard to get into reverse. The manual even says something about it. It goes something like "if difficult to shift into reverse, disengage then reengage clutch and try again". It usually works, but I just push it gently into the gate, and disengage the clutch until it drops in. Does it do then when shifting, or when driving in the gear? I have 206k on mine, and it's still bulletproof. I wish my MR2 tranny was as good.

 

i bet your tranny is prolly fine. manual trannies rattle sometimes...it's generally not a sign of impending doom. whining is what you don't want to hear.

you might wanna try replacing the gear oil in it with some redline mt-90. that stuff has quieted quite a few noisy trannies.

btw, i thought my tranny rattled for awhile...would only do it in certain gears at certain RPM levels. i then repaired some broken exhaust hangers and that fixed my "tranny rattle." LOL.

 

just re-read your post...the sometimes hard to shift part...

can you elaborate a bit on that? does it feel notchy? do the gears grind? will it just not go into gear? all gears...or a particular gear? etc.

also, what kind of oil do you have in it? the manual and FSM say you can use GL4 or GL5...but GL5 is too slippery for the synchros and has been known to cause hard shifting in yota trannies.

 

ive changed the gear oil 3 times in the last 5 months and it always has metal shavings in it, alot.

 

in light of that, i retract my statement about your tranny prolly being fine...

i would say a lot of metal shavings is a sign of impending doom. sorry man...

marlincrawler.com is a great place for rebuilt trannies if you do end up needing one.