[SpeedballTrix]

To answer your first question: I have no idea why it happened.

Last night I drove it home and it was fine, today I start it, it drives down the street fine until I take a left turn and it starts clunking like crazy.
I figured maybe it was a loose axel since it happened once before but everything looks fine.
So I waited for my father to get home form work since he's a car genius and after some testing we determined its a bad diff.
Reason being: When we lift the front end of the car and put it into drive with the handbrake on (so as to spin the one front wheel thats off the ground) it grinds like CRAZY.

The funny thing is it doesn't make any noise in a straight line or going right, only left.
So my father figures one side of the diff has a bad pinion.

I looked over the service manual and the prodedure for transaxel removal seems relatively un-ridiculous considering the size of the task.

My question to you guys is: How difficult is this going to be?
For a 16 year old econobox, is it even worth the time and money (and just how much money are we talking about)?

 

[Flashmn]

Howbout getting a junkyard transmission.

 

[SpeedballTrix]

Gonna call around tomorrow and see if I can find one and how much they go for.

 

[94_Rolla_Guy]

it isn't all that hard. on my 1986 corolla i could do it in about 6 hours and for my 1994 corolla it takes a little longer because of the stupid design of the rear motor mount. but yeah its totally do-able from a DIY point of view

 

[toyotaspeed90]

in my mr2 (which is about 10X harder to do anything in) i can get the tranny onto the ground in less than an hour. I'll give you a hint (and this made it much easier in the mr2 and i'm sure would be the same in a FWD corolla)... disconnect the hydralic clutch line and leave the slave cylinder attached to the motor. (that's mainly an mr2 hint, because the 2 bolts are the same bolt holes that line up the the shift cable linkages.... which makes for a fun hour of lining 2 bolts up).

 

[SpeedballTrix]

So the funny thing is, we pumped the diff full of -thick- marine synthetic (for our Mercruiser) and now it drives great =P

Obviously this doesn't fix the problem but it will give us some time to figure out what we want to do about it.