No oil in manual transmission!

[AndrewBurns]

Hi all, I'm in the process of converting a 2000 echo to electric power (don't cry too much, the existing engine has serious problems so it's really giving the car a second life). I'm in the process of removing the engine and transmission (1.3L with 5 speed manual) and I pulled the drain plug of the gearbox last night.

I forgot to remove the fill plug and removed the drain plug first, there was a quick burst of air like the gearbox was slightly pressurised and then nothing. I remembered that I hadn't opened the fill plug so I did that but still no oil came out... I'm thinking that there was no oil in the gearbox which certainly isn't a good thing.

I only got the car a few months ago and I've driven it probably 20km since then, I've never noticed any pools of oil under it and it didn't sound bad/wasn't hard to shift when I did drive it. I'm thinking that it couldn't be a leak because the gearbox seemed to be pressurised when I pulled the plug but I don't know much about how they're supposed to work (I thought there might be a vent on it or something which would make the air pulse that came out strange right?).

Anyway I know it's bad to not have any oil in there and there certainly will be when I get it running again but based on the fact that it didn't seem to have any problems when I was running it do you think it will have problems in the future? If I have to replace it I'd rather do it now when it's all coming out anyway rather than after I put it all back together and find out that it's ruined.

[nperera86]

I'm pretty surprised no oil came out of the gear box and even more surprised you didn't notice any shifting issues (maybe you are just an exceptional manual driver!)

In any case, the only way to be sure is to take the tranny apart and check the gears for wear. Usually hard worn gears can be felt by the driver. If I were you, and the motor wasn't replaced. I would do a quick fill with some manual tranny fluid and take it out for a spin to see how the vehicle behaves and if it feels any different that it did previously.

It's a hard call because this is a pretty strange situation to me!