How Difficult? Toyota Transmission Rebuild

I drive a 1981 Toyota Corolla TE72 3tc 4 speed manual transmission, and I think its a T40 transmission. So I am driving home from the store with my wife and as I am shifting through the gears I notice that every time I shift into 3rd, I hear a loud crunch sound. I only hear the noise when shifting into 3rd gear and I only hear it once. Its not a constant sound, but still, I hear it and I swear its getting louder every time. I know I am not the worlds greatest mechanic but I know when its time to pull out the work gloves. My question is, How difficult is it to rebuild a Toyota manual transmission? I consider myself to be a mechanically able person but I have never done this before. I have done engine/transmissions swaps in the past and it was fairly easy but this is a whole new thing for me.

Any Help Is Much Appreciated

This is a picture of when I dropped the trans for the clutch install. Don't know if pictures helps identify trans type for more accurate help.

its about as confusing as a Formula 1 steering wheel...

Wow, that looks complicated!

I think you'd be a lot better off just finding a used one on car-part.com. But, if you want to tackle it, there's a book written by someone here on the board that covers how to rebuild your manual transmission. I bought a copy.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0760320470/ref=ox_ya_oh_product

You'll be back on the road quicker with a used box. But here's the even better thing about that: you will have the original tranny to disassemble/reassemble and learn on at your leisure. That will serve you well in the years to come.

I was surprised at how simple the toyota t50 was when I took it apart. I have a rather ridiculous combination of toyota parts to get my shift lever in a certain position with my MG midget toyo conversion and used a 70-79 tailhousing (shift rods and forks) with the 83-85 main/bellhousing, so I completely disassembled mine. The toyo boxes are split case longitudinally so you really can see what's going on in there fairly simply.

google transstar, thats where i ordered my t50 rebuild kit it was pretty cheap and toyotas are definitely easy to rebuild because they are split case. just take everything apart in order and lay everything out the same way. A toyota FSM is really nice to have too.

Ok, the tips are helpful so keep them coming. I will order my rebuild kit today and will start the build this weekend. Worse case scenario, I pull everything apart and cant put the parts back together. Then I will just buy a used one.

I haven't done it yet, but apparently as transmissions go, the Toyota T-series are supposed to be fairly straightforward. The T-40 and the T-50 should share most of the same procedure for a rebuild. This guide should help you get an idea of the work involved:

http://hachiroku.net/forums/showthread.php?t=698