knocking noise coming from transmission

[ghollis_1]

yesterday afternoon, after my '03 ZHP with 60k was warmed up and sitting in the garage, i started it up. when i shifted into neutral and took my foot off the clutch, i heard a knocking noise coming from underneath the car, roughly the transmission area...the knocking was periodic, about every half-second. "felt" like some mass was loose and rotating in the bell housing if i had to guess.

i didn't rev the engine to see if it was RPM dependent (wasn't thinking at the time), but when i pressed the clutch in, the knocking noise went away. took foot off, knocking noise came back. i shifted into reverse and let the clutch out, no knocking noise.

something going south in my clutch? cars shifts and drives fine, and i don't get a knocking noise while driving around. i'm easy on my clutch, tho i do not drive the ZHP on the track, i do heel-toe, but that helps with rev-matching on the downshifts. throw-out bearing going bad? unbalanced flywheel? thanks in advance for any help given!

[HBWT]

you may be able to nurse it for a long time if that's what it is.

[JKidd]

[ghollis_1]

[JKidd]

based on what it does:

The throw out bearing is conected to a fork sticking out of your bell housing which is conected to your clutch. When you engage the clutch pedal the thowout bearing moves the the clutch away or towards the pressure plate and flywheel depending on if you press or depress the pedal while allowing it to spin.

If this bearing fails, I believe you would still be able to engage/disengage the clutch, but since it has failed, the clutch would stop spinning on disengagement and possibly result in a much more difficult/abrupt re-engagement.

[Stinger9]

bearing fail. And when a bearing starts to go (make noises), it's a sign that it doesn't have long to live.
I suspect a failed throwout bearing would allow the car to drive as long as you do not depress the clutch pedal. But once you push in the clutch and engage the load onto this bearing, you'll be tearing things up in your clutch housing, enlarging the ultimate repair bill, potentially enormously.

[HBWT]

fingers(contact points) of the pressure plate to release pressure from the clutch sandwich(PP, disc, flywheel). When the bearing completely fails it might fly apart and cause damage to other components in the bell housing...but most peeps will change it out(and all other replaceable parts) long before that. It will get noisier in time and you'll know when to do it...common sense will tell you so. Figure on doing a complete clutch job. Only variable would be with the flywheel...replace, resurface, or do nothing. All depends on the condidtion. Not sure if resurfacing is an option on E46 flywheel. A damaged flywheel must be addressed in order to prevent chatter

[ghollis_1]

kinda surprised this is happening at 60k. my E36M3 still had the original clutch at 120k, and my sister's E30 went till 210k. oh well, time for an upgrade :)

[Stinger9]

to be at one end of the curve.
What do you mean by upgrade? You'll not do better than the oem clutch, pressure plate, TO bearing, etc. if you just drive normally.

[reupreckt]

[reupreckt]

[Stinger9]

[reupreckt]

[ghollis_1]

[ghollis_1]

[HBWT]

to track it a lot.

[Stinger9]

believe too.
I'm sure there are better clutches and pressure plates, but for the street it's probably overkill to deviate from stock. There's no real good reason to abuse the clutches in our cars. They are not drag racers, and it's a waste to treat them as such.

[reupreckt]

5K miles or so, intermittently. It's a 2004 model.

You may recall a few months back, I was asking clockboy about results of folks using a lightweight flywheel in a non-M E46. I was thinking about upgrades myself while it's apart.

[reupreckt]

but stock items (on pretty much any car) usually move towards isolation, whereas I prefer, within reason, a bit more tactile response. Couple that with the fact that quality aftermarket parts are often in the same price range as OEM and for some it's a no-brainer.

My SSK in my '01 330 was far superior to the stock unit in accuracy and feel for example. A stouter clutch with more feel in the takeup would be nice too. Nothing to do with drag racing.

[reupreckt]

and the overall feel of a quicker revving motor, I'd consider it.

In fact I hope Ghollis does it first....so that I can find out his feedback and whether it's awesome or utterly ruined the car. LOL