Hello BB,

About three weeks ago, sonny boy called and said that green sedan, surprising, the baby of the fleet with some 190K, was making an awful screeching noise. I purchased the car in 2005 and have had relatively trouble free service. He had it towed back to his home, which is about 150 miles away in NJ and I took a look the following weekend as I was visiting. I initially thought it was the harmonic balancer screeching which was ruled out. The AC compressor turned freely so that wasn't it either.

Last weekend, my friend Rich and I went down with the tow dolly and after hearing the screeching which actually changed pitch a bit during the 5 second startup, we just loaded up the car for the ride home figuring this was not a job to entertain for on-street repair.

When I got home, to begin work on the car, I figured I would start it up for another 5 seconds and drive it up on the ramps. Son of a gun it it started right up with not a sound other than normal startup noises. Somehow, the trip back home on the tow dolly loosened something up, I guessed.

Rich was emphatic that the problem was that the starter gear was hanging up on the flywheel and that's where the noise was coming from. So I removed the starter which looked fine. I also removed the engine to tranny stiffener to check the flywheel. When I finally removed the last bolt securing the stiffener a very chewed up M6 bolt which was apparently sitting on the top-side of the stiffener dropped out. In addition, the top side of the stiffener had a small hole punched in it and a couple of nasty gouges.

From what I can now see, and I'm still not quite positive as I need a kid with 20 year old eyes to look, it appears an upper M6 bolt is missing from the seal carrier. There are six bolts, along with two dowels that secure the seal carrier. I can easily see the two M6 bolts on the vertical section of carrier starting from the oil pan going up. But in order to see any further in you have to use a mirror and a strong directed light and I simply cannot see that well. The flywheel doesn't seem to be damaged, but I did notice some small shards of seal carrier, sort of like a hangnail, that were dangling off the edge that I poked away with a screwdriver.

Moving on to the first question. Has this happened to any of you? Which brings me to the second question. Would you leave well enough alone or drop the tranny to hopefully, reinstall a new M6 bolt and prob replace the main seal while you're in there?

If anyone has any other thoughts, or pictures, maybe of that seal carrier to give everyone a better understanding of my problem, that would be helpful.

Wishing everyone a very happy holiday season and the best for the New Year.

Marty Wolfson

Proud member of the 300K club