If you only want the technical info, skip to the CAPS-LOCKED print.
ok, so I was cruising in front of the ex-girlfriends house about 10 mph and decided to make a little noise (her dad is fascinated by burnouts)...well, it downshifted to 1st and i burnt 'em through 3rd gear with the rpms at about 6200 i hear clank clank so i immediately let off after being so proud of my John Force-like burnout...and glare at the oil pressure, waiting for it to fall to 0psi. luckily it never happened.. i pull into a drive way and look under the car....no fluids are leaking. but what do i find?
A HOLE IN THE TRANSMISSION DUST SHIELD. SOMETHING FROM INSIDE THERE, HAS SHOT THROUGH THE DUST SHIELD AND PUT A NICKEL-SIZED HOLE IN IT. what could it have been? i had to drive the thing an hour back home and it shifted fine and there was not vibrations or anything. no more top-fuel burnouts until i get this figured out!

 

A bolt holding your torque converter maybe? Its an auto, there really isnt much going on above that dust cover.

 

i was thinking tc bolt also, but i wasn't really sure what all is up there since i had a shop install that for me.
assuming that's what it was, does that mean the transmission will need to be dropped again to put a new bolt back in?
and in your opinion, would you say this is a fault of the shop who installed it? (maybe they didn't tighten it enough).
if it's their fault, i don't think i should have to pay to have it fixed. if not then i guess i'll just have to put the car away for the winter and drop the tranny over christmas break...
test-n-tune is next sunday....

 

you can get to your tc - to - flywheel bolts with the dust cover off and the transmission still bolted up to your block.

 

Dude!! where you got those fly a** shorts! Hook a brotha up!

j/k It sounds like you got a bolt broken or off. that would make a hole the size of a nickel in your cover. You may want to pull off the cover and see if you see any glaring at you. Maybe spin the motor by hand and have a look. Or second, you can pull the starter out and get one of those morrors on a sticj and nave a look at the back of the flywheel to see what is missing. I would not drive it or at least as little as possible until you find out what caused that and why. Could have been a tooth coming off the flywheel.

Just my 2 pennies

 

haha I didnt even notice that. nice wheels.

 

cut me a break, it was the summer time! lol everyone always laughs at the shorts!

well, hopefully i can get it back to dad's garage and pull that cover off there and see what happened. assuming it was a bolt from the TC, does anyone happen to know what size I will be needing? i'll go ahead and pick one up someone where.
...oohh, now if the bolt it broke off, then i will probably have to drop the tranny and drill it out...that blows.
Now I'm starting to forget, why didn't I just buy a Civic? ...oh, that's right, 0-60 in 8.9 seconds would have made it really gay for me to pose with flower shorts on in front of my car.

 

Most any autoparts stores will have flywheel bolts and so forth. DO NOT buy them at a hardware store as you are never quite sure what you are getting.

 

great, thanks for the help. hopefully i can get this fixed saturday night so i can go to test n tune on sunday. it's my last chance to get it to the track because the insurance is dropped on Nov 1st!
i'll update this post and let you all know if it was something other than a flywheel bolt.
thanks again.
Michael

 

Actually if it is a bolt that is broke or flat came loose it is most likely a torque converter bolt or a pressure plate bolt depenting on your trans. Flywheel bolt head is about the size of a quarter. and would leave a hole about that size.

 

seems to me that if it was a TC bolt that the TC itself will be rattling like a ****. even with the other 2 bolts secure, wouldnt the TC vibrate to hell?

but yea, just remove the dust shield and you can get to your TC bolts. it would make it much easier if you had a second person turning the crank so you can check all 3 of the bolts to make sure no others are starting to come off. after this id almost want to replace all the bolts with new treated ones.

 

well, today after class, i decided to look up under there and try to take a picture of the hole. i noticed something shining back at me. whatever broke/fell was still imbedded in the hole (it never actually made it all the way out). so since my dust shield is already destroyed, i am attempting to make the hole bigger and now i am going to go find a magnet and get the alien object out of there and try to identify it.

 

ok, the object which was loose is a little black bolt about 2.8cm long and the head looks like it is 10mm. the threads are totally stripped on one side and the end of the bolt is pretty tore up so i don't know if is snapped off or if it just pulled out, or if maybe it vibrated it's way loose and then got grinded up on the tourque convertor or flywheel. hopefully it didn't strip out the hole so i can get a new bolt to thread back in with no problems.

 

Hey Shorts, (my nickname for you) can you post a picture of the bolt?
may help us all
thanks

 

If it looks like a 10mm bolt then it probably came from the trans pump. But if that happened it'd be a lot longer...almost an inch and a half. Unlikely but possible. But they'd have to have forgotten to tell you they were doing that. And it definately wouldn't cause a vibration as there are likt 11 other bolts holding the pump in. And a TQ converter may not vibrate with a bolt missing as long as it is still flush with the flexplate and not moving...meaning the other TQ converter bolts would be tight. Check the TQ bolts and see if any are missing. Then you can use one of those snake scopes and try to check the flexplate bolts (I doubt those are missing). IF it would be anything other than the TQ converter bolts the tranny needs to come down to fix it. Good luck "Shorts"

Chris