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So anyone ever have a tooth from a gear break off? I have a sound coming from my transmission that my mechanic says sounds like a tooth is broken. Engine needs to be pulled to get to transmission to take apart to change the gear. Uggghhh, just did a head gasket on that side, I just can't seem to catch a break! Anyone else ever have this problem?

Be sure it's not plug wires. I had what I thought was a transmission problem on my port engine. Turned out to be a loose plug wire on the forward-most, inboard plug. The engine wasn't running rough enough for that to be obvious. But it was making a clattering sound that I swore was the transmission. Mechanic came out to give it a look and found the loose plug wire.

Otherwise, no trouble with the v-drives in our 348.

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista

Was it a consistent repetitive clanking? As soon as I put it in to gear, it will happen, but when engine is at idle not in gear, engine runs smooth. Would think loose wire would be whether in gear or not.

I don't recall exactly but it did get markedly worse when in-gear. Most probably because of the added load of spinning up the drive. But I do seem to recall it being present when out of gear. Yours sounding only when put into gear, yeah, would seem more like a transmission issue. My advice would be pull and re-seat the plug wires anyway, and check that the plugs are seated fully. I only raised this because you mentioned the head having been worked on recently (which would require removing/replacing the plugs).

As for transmission issues, we had an absolute devil of a time dealing with getting them aligned properly. We eventually had to have the regional ZF tech come out and do it properly.

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista

Turns out it was not the transmission, just jumped to quickly to a conclusion. Ended up being a bad intake valve, do to a bad fuel injector, so that cylinder was running lean and burned up the intake valve. All in all, pretty cheap fix, about $90 for injector, $20 for intake valve, plus labor. Could have been much worse!

Ok then, now we know a second kind of transmission scare!

Good to hear you found a fix, thanks for the update.

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista

I'll have to say; this is the first time I've ever heard of an intake valve burning. I've heard and had exhaust valves burn, but never an intake.