98luder’s Weblog

In preparation for a track day we decided to open up the transmission to inspect the gears and possibly change any worn or damaged gears/syncro’s.
Once the transmission is pulled out of the car lets open up the bell housing and start the inspection.

Like the Bseries and Dseries transmission i showed in my other rebuilds the Kseries also has a magnet inside the case to catch floating debris/metal filings. Yikes lots of metal on this little guy.

Now time to get to business…inspecting these gears for wear
1st gear, looks good

2nd gear, looks pretty bad

3rd gear, looks decent

4th gear, looks good

5th gear, looks decent

6th gear, looks decent

Well, looking at the gears, looks like i will be replacing the 2nd gear in this transmission. I had the option to just purchase the gear itself, or the whole syncro sleeve/hub/gear set. Honda sells it both ways. Looking at the way that gear looked i decided to go with the whole set, who knows what else could be funky….and it’s a good idea i did, and i’ll show you why below.

Time to setup for the tranny rebuild.
-main shaft with all gears, check
-counter shaft with all gears, check
-new oem honda 2nd gear/syncro set
-new oem honda input shaft seal and bearing
-gear speed carbon syncro set
-syncro prelube

Now time to press off the gears in order to get to the syncros and 2nd gear set

With the gears off now we can get a better visual comparison of the 2nd gear and the syncro hub/sleeve.
New 2nd gear on the left, old 2nd gear on the right

Closer look at the 2nd gear, man oh man is that thing beat

Comparison of the 1st/2nd syncro hub/sleeve, new on the left and old on the right

It was a good idea i got the full set, look at the old syncro sleeve teeth. They are pretty worn down, almost deformed looking.

Brand new oem Honda

Assembled and ready to rock and roll 🙂

Next, move onto the main shaft
Gears all slide off like butter

Also, here is a closer look at the carbon lined syncros from gear speed.


OEM syncro

Gear speed syncro on the top, oem syncro on the bottom

While installing the syncros i noticed that the dc5R kit i got has signal cone syncro, when my tranny actually has dual cone syncros. I gave Gearspeed a call and talked to a rep named James. He was awesome to deal with, very knowledgeable. He just asked me to pack them up and send the 2 single cone syncros back and he would just send me dual syncros for gear 5 and 6. That’s some awesome customer service….since i bought these in Dec some time. Thanks James 🙂
You can hit up gear speed here
Gear Speed website link

Here’s a picture showing the difference between the signal and dual cone syncros. Good thing i had a spare set lying around so i used those for the time being.

Okay everything assembled and ready for installation.
But before we close up the tranny i decided to also change the input shaft seal and bearing. It’s all open any ways so it doesn’t take that much more time to do so. It’s good idea to do it now, if it goes and starts spraying tranny fluid into the clutch housing i would have to pull the entire tranny out again to do it.

All ready to go

So that was the K20a tranny rebuild with new carbon syncros and 2nd gear/sycnro hub/sleeve. After the test drive i will comment again on the new carbon syncros and initial impressions of driving feel.