I bought a 96 T/A with a (supposedly) 18 thousand mile T56 in it. Well when you go to shift into reverse it will grind incredibly bad. If you slam it in theres a big clunk but it goes. Or you can stick it in 5th then real quick put it into Reverse and feel the slightest clunk, more clunk the longer it takes you to get from 5th to reverse.

It has a zoom race clutch in it, stock flywheel, pressure plate, hydraulics.

My only other T56 car had a spec 3 setup in it and it didn't engage until the very top of letting the pedal out. With this car it seems to inch forward fairly good if you let the clutch out even like 1/4 inch and it starts to engage allot quicker than my other setup did.

So... Trany needs rebuilt or the hydraulics/ clutch components are messed up?


I totaled the car this T56 is in last night but I'm getting a rolling chasis as soon as I get the insurance money and doing a drivetrain swap and getting my 9" in this car. Just wondering if I should tear into this T56 and overhaul it before I do (never overhauled one before, been reading up on it allot though). Or just throw it in there. I've put like 800 miles on it since I had the car and it hasn't got better or worse.

 

It sounds like the pilot bearing or bushing which ever is in there
could be to tight on the output shaft .The only way to be sure is to drop
the trans and put an alignment tool in there and see how tight the fit is.
Good Luck!!!!!!!
I tried the Zoom pilot bushing fit good on the shaft before I installed it.After installed shaft would not fit.

 

Once you get it in gear does it stay or does it pop out?

 

Rebuild depends on how you've treated the trans. If you're grinding gears a lot, missing shifts, driving with a messed up clutch, or driving with known internal problems then I'd rebuild it just cause it's out. Even with a bit of aggressive driving 18,000 is nothing on a T56. I didn't rebuild the 1-6 synchros until 85,000 and that was driving with the wrong input shaft in the car for approx 30,000, and driving with a messed up reverse for 10,000. On top of that the only reason I did was because I was replacing the input shaft anyway. Granted most the time the TA was stock, and I wasn't dragging it.

Your clutch issue sounds like either a worn out clutch/pp/flywheel, hydraulic issue, or possibly a missing shim. Don't know if the zoom clutches require a shim or if the flywheel has been resurfaced and no compensating shim was added. Either way your clutch should not begin to engage that low. When you do the drive line swap contact Zoom for disc measurement info and inspect the flywheel/pp for flatness. Also make sure you completely bench bleed the master to the point that you can't depress the piston with the master disconnected from the slave before you connect it to the slave.

Your reverse clunk is probably a clutch issue, but if you're gonna have the trans out anyway, you might as well pull the tailhousing off and inspect reverse as it's easy to get to. I had a similar problem and quite a few people have had reverse problems. Clunks/grinding in reverse and popping out. I ended up with a new reverse synchro, fork, and (because I kept driving it) a new gear. Take the tail housing off, pull the reverse gear. Inspect the gear, slider, keys, shift fork, and shift pads. Fortunately all those parts are fairly cheap and it's an easy install.

 

Thanks for the info guys. I pulled the motor/ trany out last night and right now I'm cleaning the garage/ parts and then I'm gonna tear the motor down. Then I'll check some of the things on the T56 you guys mentioned. It'll probally be a few days but I'll let you know how it looks.