Input shaft bearing - what would you do?

1996 access cab, 3.4L, manual, 340K miles

My local transmission shop (which has an excellent reputation) has diagnosed my truck as needing a new input shaft bearing in its manual transmission. The options seem to be 1) have them replace this bearing at a cost of $2200, maybe more if they find other issues or 2) replace the transmission with a rebuilt one.

The shop did not recommend option 2 because they've encountered mixed results with the quality of rebuilt transmissions for this truck.

I'm curious about other possible options or suggestions. Thanks in advance!

 

It seems labor costs have gone crazy!!

I had all the bearings replaced cost of the bearings was $250.00 the Labor was$250.00

What kind of Turn Around on a Marlin Crawler rebuild??

 

What led them to saying you need a new input shaft bearing?

 

No Doubt $$$$ to be had.

That is about the easiest bearing to change a quick $2200.00

 

I was just curious because I know the input bearing 'chirp' is extremely common on Tacomas, I've just learned to live with it. I don't think it's worth going through the trouble to replace the bearing just because its chirping, especially at that labor price

 

If the bearing has actually failed, well that's another story I guess

 

Does that $2200 include a new clutch as well? Or is that just labor?

Even at $100 an hour, thats 22 hours of labor, which seems high.

 

Yeah and that may be the best approach given the price tag: live with this noise and see if the bearing noise becomes much worse and/or ultimately fails. Of course, I'd prefer not to be on one of my backcountry outings when such a failure occurs!

 

Mines been doing it for 5 years/70k plus miles. It's a common thing with Tacomas, rarely does the bearing actually fail. In fact I don't think I've heard of it happening on a Tacoma.

 

People mistakenly refer to it as the throwout bearing chirp, if you look up that on TW you'll see a ton of threads on it. The biggest complaint is just the chirping noise but I don't think I've ever heard of someone actually having one fail.

 

I could see if your doing a clutch and the transmission is out but to pull it out to just change a bearing

 

I would change your oil and put in Redline mt90,1st,

These transmissions should go 500k easily

 

Agreed @1997tacomav6. Interesting thing is, I changed this oil with Redline already some 6-7 months ago.

 

Gear oil won't solve the bearing chirp, only a new bearing will. The thing is though, it will happen again with the new one. I've had two clutches installed on this truck (new bearings both times) and both started chirping again within ~10k miles. It's just a Tacoma thing as far as I'm concerned.

 

Perfect, this advice/experience is just gold. One of the reasons I love this forum so much!

 

I would definitely replace it eventually but wait until you have to do the clutch like others have said, since the transmission has to get dropped anyway. When you do the clutch it's a perfect time to replace all that stuff, rear main seal included.

 

I'm pretty sure I have the input bearing chirp as well. Truck is quiet in 4th gear and with the clutch pedal depressed, any other gear and you hear a bearing whine which tracks engine RPMs. I asked my mechanic's opinion on it and he said he wouldn't recommend changing it just due to the labor cost. He didn't seem to think it was likely to grenade the transmission anytime soon.

I've looked into Marlin Crawler's rebuild service. According to their website they don't have any r150f cores, so you have to send them your current transmission and their turnaround time is 6-8 weeks. I'm hoping to find someone local to do the job when I replace the clutch in the next year or two. Although if I only get 10k miles worth of quiet operation I think I'll be pretty disappointed.

 

From what I've read on the subject, a chirp in neutral that goes away when you touch the clutch pedal is the input bearing, even though a lot of people seem to think its the throwout bearing. The throwout bearing does the opposite, makes a chirp/whine when you press the clutch.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but either way I agree it's not something to fret over unless you notice other issues or are looking to replace the clutch anyway.

@gearcruncher would be a good one to hear from on this topic

 

In my case, the noise (diagnosed as an input shaft bearing issue) goes away when I press in the clutch.

 

This video has a good breakdown of the internals and the different bearings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZNWKjVZSrY