Did I just fix most of my drivetrain chatter?!

[insomniac2k2]

So I decided to do a little experiment after i climbed under my car looking for possible reasons why there could be so much drive line chatter and "weirdness" with the clutch/shifting. I was also looking for the reason for a knock that was making my ecu pull timing. As it wasn't a real knock, i figured it must be exhaust, or drivetrain..

Here's what I found:

My cross-member bolts were loose. If I were to guess, there was probably only 5-10lbs of torque on them. So i snugged them up a bit.

Then i looked at everything further. Eyeball clearances between my exhaust and body were way off from side to side. You could see this all the way up to the manifolds. The passengers side had a ton of clearance and the drivers side had very little. After further inspection, it seemed quite possible that my engine was out of alignment.

Out came the jack stands...

I loosened the crossmember bolts on the body and from the transmission. After I loosened the last bolt, I gave the transmission a nice little knudge. It quickly shifted towards the passenger side about an 1/8". That was about exactly half of the clearance difference between the 2 sides of the engine and exhaust. So i decided to loosen top and bottom bolts on both motor mounts for a "formal" adjustment.

Being that the exhaust and engine was indicating the same miss-alignment, I just eyeballed the engine and transmission, using manifold to body clearance on both sides. Tightened it all up and took it for a half hour drive.

This could ABSOLUTELY be placebo, and time will definitely tell if things stay better, but as of this moment, I notice a big difference on a few things. My driveline chatter is much quieter and I have yet to get the awful driveline unloading noise that irritates the crap out of me. No matter what I did, if I depressed the clutch at low speed, It would sound like I was driving a garbage truck with all the clanking!!

Here's the kicker. I havent felt the weird knotching between first and second gear (which is grinding when the car is cold...) yet. I will know for sure if anything changed there in the next few days. As it's very consistent....

I would never really imagine that all these "issues" could be caused by a little drivetrain miss-alignment. Is this possible???

[Driveshaftshop]

The Giubo joints on the shaft need to be aligned or they push and pull, if very possible they were part of the problem.

[insomniac2k2]

Interesting. I REALLY hope that this was my issue. I never really gave it much thought when swapping motors and transmissions in my old schools. I would just line them up and bolt away. Never really "Felt" anything bad or different by doing so this way.

I cant wait to get more time behind the wheel to see if some things are truly better. It would certainly suck if this was all placebo

[insomniac2k2]

Just got back from a 2.5 hour round trip drive. I am still very happy with the results. Way less chatter, and still have yet to feel the second gear notch. I will try and give it a go first thing in the morning when the transmission is cold.

[Run and Gun]

[insomniac2k2]

Another 3 hours of driving today. Chatter is greatly reduced, and It hasn't felt like its pulling timing. Time for some data logging to confirm this.

[TJeezey]

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