Owned 2001 Civic 2door, 5 speed DX with 49,000miles since new. Do all my own maintenance & was surprised when transmission started to develop a whine at about 35,000 miles. Changed transmission fluid (Honda) & it got a little better, for a while. At about 45,000 miles the whine got a lot worse & both the Honda dealer & a very reputable independent shop guessed at one or more transmission shaft bearings. Honda dealer quoted approx $1300 to fix, & independent shop quoted $600. I decided to go with the independent shop & they pulled it apart & found the mainshaft bearing, nearest the clutch, to be bad. Thankfully everything else was OK. The guys at the shop let me see the tranny all pulled apart & you could feel the bearing was rough.
As for reasons why this bearing failed? It's hard to know. I drive reasonably hard (former FF1600 racer from Europe) & double de-clutch while downshifting, but there was no evidence of abuse anywhere else in the tranny. The shop said that about the only way to damage that bearing is to run the 'box low on oil, as it's physically the highest bearing in the 'box. I know that I filled the fluid correctly, so perhaps the original factory fill was insufficient.
Honda said they would look at my issue as an out-of-warranty claim, but the Honda dealer would have to trar down the tranny before they would commit to covering any of the repair.
Hope this assists anyone else with a similar issue....AJH
As for reasons why this bearing failed? It's hard to know. I drive reasonably hard (former FF1600 racer from Europe) & double de-clutch while downshifting, but there was no evidence of abuse anywhere else in the tranny. The shop said that about the only way to damage that bearing is to run the 'box low on oil, as it's physically the highest bearing in the 'box. I know that I filled the fluid correctly, so perhaps the original factory fill was insufficient.
Honda said they would look at my issue as an out-of-warranty claim, but the Honda dealer would have to trar down the tranny before they would commit to covering any of the repair.
Hope this assists anyone else with a similar issue....AJH