last fall before I put the car away, it started making a moderately loud grinding noise which sounded like it was coming from under the hood, only during wot acceleration. It sounded like nothing I had heard before. One time on the e-way, it actually felt like it was dragging the car down.....never figured out what it was, put the car away and left for georgia for four months for work....
anyways when I started puting the headers in there acouple weeks ago(hour here, hour there) I pulled off the torque converter inspection cover and found a nice little bolt laying in there that looked like it had been through WWIII. There was also gouges in the torgue converter front cover and scrapes around the bellhousing.
Apparently under hard acceleration this bolt was getting sucked up into the torque converter and squeezed up between the t.c. and the bellhousing on its way around.
The converter cover looks like it took things pretty well, and besides some scrapes the trans looks fine too, no cracks in the housing. The remaining question is where did that bolt come from Its too small to be from the trans pump, not off the flexplate.....looks to be about the same size as the bolts from the area of the rear main seal Anyone know how many bolts hold that thing on? Anyone ever heard of them backing out? Its not leaking oil out of there, yet...did anyone actually make it all the way through that story??

 

Yep, probably from the rear main seal housing. It's been a while, but I have read posts in the past about that very thing.

Rear main seal.

 

Does this mean its time to drop the trans? Thanks for chiming in shoebox. As always, your the man!

p.s. anyone want to trade 40K 4L60E + cash for m6 setup??? since its gonna be out anyways....

 

As I recall some of the old posts, people that had that happen said they did not have any leaks and were going to ride it out to see what happened. I don't know what the results were. To actually fix it, the tranny looks like it will have to be pulled back. I guess you could use it as an excuse to put in a new seal.

 

Thanks again.....by the way, your tech page is great! I've used it countless times....