Transmission sat with water inside. Would you use it? Pics inside

Hey all,

I just purchased and received a transmission from a 2004 Nissan Maxima - a 6 speed manual with LSD. It looked really rough when I got it, and the oil I drained from it was a funny brown colour. So I opened it up.

I scrubbed it all out thoroughly in a solvent tank, here's what I'm left with. Concerned with the staining on the bearing rollers and races as well as the gears themselves. The marks can just barely be felt with a fingernail. Like it took me a several tries and scraping clean areas to compare to tell what I was feeling.

This is the reverse gear. It and 6th gear are the only two that are affected.

6th gear

I have one vote of "I'd risk it, it'll probably be okay" from an experienced Nissan tech who looked at it in person. I'm on the fence, the gears I'd probably be okay with but the diff bearing race and rollers have me worried.

Gears will polish up just fine. If its a bit whiney in 6th, turn the radio up.

For the price of a tapered roller bearing, I would change it.

I would replace the bearings. Better now then risk another R&R.

Those gears will probably run ok, you need bearings though.

Okay thanks guys. Next question, how close tolerance are bearings made? The spec on all the gear stacks except for reverse is 0.002". I'd have to re-shim it right?

If I'm tearing it all down and waiting 3-4 weeks for backordered shims I also have a complete gearset from a Sentra Spec-V which is identical to this trans. I may just swap that in to this casing. I paid a premium for this exact spec trans hoping it was just going to be a drop in, I could have saved a few hundred if I was going to end up swapping the guts around....

Bearings are close enough tolerance that there's no way you are going to get it closer than it already is.

Excellent, I was hoping that was the case. Thank you!

Funny But I would replace those two gears before the bearings, but as stated at there cost(bearings) replace them. I never had much luck running Buggered up Gears. Polish them ? Don't waste your time as they are already chipped up and will likely send chunks into another set of gears, you ever see a car after the gear box locks up,amazing how far they can slide before hitting someone or a wall,Gary once said it felt like being in a wreck.!

Change the bearings while you have it apart. The gears will likely be noisy, but otherwise ok to reuse.

Go get your money back? Or did you purchase this as is knowing that it was compromised?

dean1484 wrote: Go get your money back? Or did you purchase this as is knowing that it was

yeah that, if it's an option

I found it on car-part.com listed in "A" condition and called the junkyard I bought it from directly. Looking back I never really discussed the condition, just verified it was correct and bought it. I'm going to try and get some money back but I'm not very hopeful. I paid via email interac, so I have no recourse there. The junkyard is about 900mi away.

Tell them where to find the pictures and use the Company's NAME, Some peole want to keep their name Clean, You have access to hundreds and thousands of potential customers here or the same number of bad raps from your friends here. so who and where are they located.

Will do if they don't make it right. Spoke to them on the phone today, apparently I will be getting money back on Monday.

Just for words of encouragement, I had one that had more water than oil in it. No real idea how long it had been in there, but probably months. I didn't even open it. I drained the water. I filled it with kerosene, spun it, dumped the kerosene, did it again. Filled it with oil and drove for 50K miles with no noise/issues before selling the car.

How rare is this transmission, and did you pay a premium? I'd probably ask them for a rebate to cover your time and bearings, unless you got a bargain in the first place. Then I would personally fill it up and run it as is. Do a short change interval.

Run_Away wrote: I have one vote of "I'd risk it, it'll probably be okay" from an experienced Nissan tech who looked at it in person. I'm on the fence, the gears I'd probably be okay with but the diff bearing race and rollers have me worried.

The bearings would howl. Those look worse than some bearings I've replaced for unacceptable noise. (Common on boat-towin' trucks)

The gears would be noisy and also wear quickly, and when gears wear through their hardening, they get thin rather quickly and then shear.

Thanks for the replies. I'm not going any further until I have a final say on if/how much money I'm getting back, but I'll probably use the internals of this one as parts.

It's a really rare trans in this configuration (V6 6 speed bellhousing, 4.1:1 final drive, helical limited slip) but Nissan used variations of this transmission in pretty much all their manual trans vehicles. I paid $600 CAD plus shipping and taxes for it, for a total of $813 CAD.

I have this exact transmission with a 4 cyl bellhousing, and a 5 speed open diff version with the V6 bellhousing. What I needed was a 6 speed V6 bellhousing, and I paid a bit more to get it with the diff and final drive that I wanted already assembled. Opposed to buying any open diff 6 speed V6 trans just so I could harvest the bellhousing - I was looking at around $550 for one of those. So $300 returned and I'll be happy.