so my Tranny makes a winding noise in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd gear.  I changed the fluid and it's still noisy.  I was told by people at work (we build race cars) that it sounds like the Throw-out bearing may be going.  So a "clutch job" may be in my very near future.

I'm just wondering what you all have paid for a clutch job.  just to gauge how hard i'm going to get hit.

It's your trans bearings. 

how hard is it to change the tranny bearings?

If it's fairly quiet in 4th, it would be the tranny bearings.  Try to find a good used or rebuilt if you can't rebuild. Changing out a transmission/changing a clutch is pretty easy on a sammy. Give youself a good day or two if you've never done one. You should be able to do one in less than 8 hours. That allows for dropping shafts, and exhaust and cleanning everything up. You may encounter some rusty bolts on the exhaust like I did. I could probably do a full swap now in less than 4 hours. Of course I'm kind of slow at it (I think.)

Another thing you might try (it helped mine) is throw in a quart or so of lucas. Don't use the lucas for trannys because I think it says for automatics.  I used the same stuff you use in the engine. It says on the bottle it's for manual transmissions (in the fine print). It quieted mine down quite a bit but I think it may have made it harder to shift when the tranny was cold.


-Adam

Its the bottom lower bearing. Its not that difficult. If you can put a 4to1 in the Tcase this will be easier. The bearing is around $20 from suzuki. If you continue to drive it it will take out other bearings.

Mike