What happens if you continue to drive on a bad pilot bearing. It makes a wineing sound when ever the clutch depressed. Hence it goes away when you press the clutch. I was told that this is the pilot bearing and my friend has driven on his car like this for quite a while. Now it's making a clunking sound. What is the worst that a bad pilot bearing can do in terms of damage? If I replace it for him (with a new seal) will it solve all the problems? Anyone that has experience with this please. Thanks in advance.



Jacob

 

worst case; the pilot bearing uses the input shaft of the trans as its inner race, so when the bearing fails, it chews up the input shaft, most of the time you can sand it out with emory papre, but occasionally its bad enough you need a new input shaft

 

maybe its ur input bearing

 

It can seize up and you will have a difficult time shifting, once broken loose it will shift again but then you risk damaging the imput shaft.



Becareful it can get expensive..........

 

Ive had that happen. And I suspect the bad pilot ruined the bearings on the input shaft to the point where the vibration backed out the bolts in the trans front cover.



Why didnt Mazda use a bushing instead?

 

I had mine shred apart on my 86 and the only way I could shift gears was to rev high enough in a gear, yank the gearshift and as rpm fell shift to the gear at just the right rpm. Kinda like speedshifting without the clutch. I was 300 miles from home but limped home like this. My saftey start switch on the clutch never worked so at lights I would go to neutral, shut the car off, shift to secnod and start it in gear and it always cuaght, run up in second to 5k and shift straight to fourth as rpms fell to match. Pretty wild actually. Made it home, took it to a shop and they changed the clutch and said the pilot shredded but no major damage.



I would replace it ASAP to be safe though. Pilot bearing and seal is pretty cheap , probably less than $10. Tranny has to come out which is a pain unless you have a lift. Still, it can be done with stands on all four corners and some help from a friend.

Good luck,

Rob



PS-Mine was making whining noise before it shredded so that might tell you where you could be heading.