flex plate
 

I had my tranny replaced last december, and just in the last two weeks I started getting a load ticking sound coming from the tranny. Come to find out the flex plate was cracked, which I thought was part of the transmission. So this thing is costing $600 to replace. I guess my only question is that has anyone heard of this problem before and what would cause that

odd
 

I have never heard of any problems with the flex plate nor do I know of any weakness with it. By design, its not "really" under alot of stress. The Flex plate is bolted to the crankshaft and performs two duties. The outside ring is for the starter to turn the motor over with. The second is that there is three or four (my guess is 4) bolts that connect it to the torque converter and spins it on the tranny input shaft. You might want to ask the user Chad. I think he had a flex plate noise, but if memory serves me right it was dues to loose converter bolts. Anyone else had flex plate failure??

Chris

Re: odd
 

I haven't had a flex plate fail on a Subie, but they are a pretty flimsy piece of metal, if they got it in a bind when torquing the torq. conv. bolt down, that could crack it.
And Chris the flex plate on a Subie doesn't have the gear ring on it like every other brand I've worked on, the gear ring is located on the Torque converter ( possibly because the starter enters from the rear, not the front like on most common engine designs).

Hope this helps,

:rolleyes:

Flex plate noise
 

I had a noise similar to that. I used to do it all the time. I found all the bolts that hold the flywheel to torque convertor bolts loose, and one of them wasn't even seated all the way.

I have a hunch that the flexplate is cracked though because when I put the car into reverse I get the noise still.

Funny thing is, I had the tranny replaced last year, and the noise started soon after.

Good Luck.

I had the same problem -cracked flex plate (flywheel). Level 10 rebuilt my transmission and did not replace the flex plate. It was making the chattering noise before I took it to them and was misdiagnosed as valve chatter. So I had to pay again for them to remove the trans to replace the flex plate!

When replacing a transmission, I would recommend looking very close at the flex plate and replacing that also while the trans is removed.