'92 SE-R Transmission

[Bill the arcstarter]

Well last night I took the SE-R transmission apart to replace 5th gear
components ("pop-out").  I was able to witness the horrible effects of
170Kmi...  The 5th gear parts have the standard wear issues - shagged
splines, C-clips nearly sheared in half etc.  Nice.  5th shift fork has worn
through the nubs on the end of the finger (which engage the sliding sleeve).

Turns out the last guy to have the trans apart (which was the Nissan
dealership 130Kmi ago) was too lazy to put all the bolts back into the input
shaft bearing retainer plate.  Not sure if this affected anything but it
sure pissed me off...  I have never had this trans apart before (but have
had others apart).  Dealer Monkeys!

"If you take your car to the garage, you won't know what sort of bad job
they'll do.
But if you fix it yourself - you'll know..."

The trans has been repaired under warranty (for 5th gear popout) at
47Kmiles.

Luckily I had a collection of the various sizes of 5th gear retainer
snaprings, and was able to use the thickest ring to minimize the hub
clearance as per FSM.  However last time we did this on a trans w/ shagged
hub splines, the thing only held together for 20Kmi or such (Andy Neuman's).
  Thus my days are numbered.

The 5th gear which came out of the trans was the same style as the revised
non-popout version of 5th gear.   Thus - my popout was probably not caused
by the wearing of the synchro teech, as much as the hammering and partial
'extrusion' of the 5th gear hub retention C-clip.  Clearance is supposed to
be 0.000 - 0.004 inches.  Before disassy clearance was >0.025 due to the
damaged clipring.

Most depressing are the telltale signs of old age on the main output (diff)
bearings.  Large grey band with signs of some flecking in the outer race.
Sigh...  May have to at least reshim or replace, which sounds difficult
since they are ~4 inch diameter.  Do they make a "Grecian Formula" to
prevent premature greying of bearing races?

So, has anyone on this list replaced the main output bearings on one of
these transmissions?  I'm wondering what sorts of mystery tools are required
to do the pulling/pushing.

-Bill
'92 Classick