What oil do you use? Synthetic oil has been known to swell up seals that are not leaking much. Amsoil stoped a leaking rear main seal, (my screw up during rebuild). Might be worth a shot if your not using "Red Line MTL" or some other Synthetic.

Hello,

I know this is an old message, but I think I solved the grinding problem in my tranny when my clutch went up (note the position of the clutch, it is everything in this thread). So I've been living with this thing for years, every morning, start, growling noise (like noisy gears) and then push the clutch and it goes away. As the car got warmer it got worse. If I put lighter oil (ATF) in the trans it got worse. I got it to quiet down a little bit under some conditions with a little bit of Lucas oil treatment but that wasn't really a solution.

As I have spent the last few years sitting in intersections commuting and listening to the growling, I tried a successful experiment. I wiggled my shifter around and the sound went away temporarily. Then it came back later. The wiggling specifically was pushing the stick forward between the 1/3 gate. I think this forces a couple of the links to more at once - although the gates should protect you from fully engaging two gears.

So I went under the car for the nth time this weekend and started fiddling with the shift levers at the tranny. 1/2 and 3/4 have really positive detents. R did not. I mean it just swiveled around. I wondered if the lever was loose (had this problem years ago on 1/2) but no, it was tight. Somehow the little locking mechanism is just gone - whatever 300k worth of shifts will probably do it. Additionally the car had a loose 1/2 lever when I got it so the car would often jam up between gears and take forever to unjam till I figured out I had to tighten up the slipping lever. Maybe the R detents got damaged then. The car goes into R still and works fine, just noisy in neutral.

Anyhow, I readjusted the R linkage so the rod would get a little longer, that is, when I threw the car into N the lever on the tranny would get thrown further forward. The sound is now dramatically reduced. It still growls at times - probably when the R bar migrates back (no detents to stop it) to the noisy position. It's like my mom when she tried to put my 79 civic into reverse without putting the clutch down - although it was done gently. Anyhow, the 240 is much quieter now.

Hope this helps people. Honestly, the posters here were spot on, it is gear noise. But it my case, I was able to booger it up by doing a non-spec linkage adjustment (6mm drill bit trick just won't do on my worn out trans). Somehow, lengthening the bar gets it out of the bad zone where the R gears drag.

So now the questions for the experts. My car is an 82, without any of the trapdoors or service areas on the trans. If I were to take on fixing this, how tough is it to get in there and change the worn/broken dentent? I mean, looking at the unit construction of this trans, it looks like the only way to get in there is to pull both sticks of gears out through the front end (who knows how to release the shift forks).

Sounds like I'd need the tranny manual. I have the regular car manual (OE) but it doesn't include clutch and trans stuff :(.

Any thoughts?

Thanks again for all the great service tricks I've gotten here over the last few years. Just returning the favor...although very late.

Cheers,
Yoko

Update. Okay it has been years since I posted this but after finally solving the clutch growling problem I'm thrilled to post what really happened since it may help others.

My clutch wouldn't disengage one morning. It looked like classic hydraulics problems so I pulled master and slave cyls and replaced them. Bled system many different ways and clutch still wouldn't disengage. Established the hydraulics were functional off the car. Finally after hair pulling I bit the bullet and took the car to Indy for a new clutch. In past I would have DIY but I'm still recovering from open heart surgery a year back and didn't feel up to it. Under normal circumstances it looks like the easiest of clutch jobs.

The clutch had good bite before the failure. I am the third owner with a pile of old records and it may be the original. Dunno. All I know is I shift like a mechanic who doesn't like clutch jobs.

Indy pulls the tranny and finds the coil springs on the clutch had disintegrated. He said they were dragging around in there and that is why pumping the clutch temporarily stopped the growling. No more growling now at idle in neutral. He said my throw out bearing was pretty worn. Clutch still had friction material but mechanicals of clutch were shot. I will google to discover the actual purpose of the coil springs.

Thanks again for being there over the years. I'm still dieselling along.

Interesting, thanks for the up date. Thats just what happened to me in my 85 TD. I'm driving along, and put in the clutch coming to a stop sign and I hear this snapping noise. Get towed home, (not far)Pull the tranny and find one of those springs came adrift and must have knocked the slave push rod out of the throw out bearing yoke.