Haha well her guts are exposed.
1st gear shows where those little chunks I found on my magnetic plug came from.
5th gear overdrive has a cut going all the way around both gear teeth. I haven't yet decided if that was put in by Nissan to aid oil distribution or if something chunked the gear. I'm going with oil distribution as it looks so uniform.
Turning the unit by hand something is dragging enough to roll fine, roll fine, lock it. I would assume a roller bearing under one of the gears blew up hence the source of my noise.
If we play this out it sort of makes sense. I had vibration at 45 mph right? So with 4 teeth missing from 1st gear (all the gears turn no matter what gear your in) once I hit 45mph. The absence of teeth on 1st gear caused the gear to be out of balance causing my vibration. Its a possibilty that the teeth have been broken for quite sometime. Over time the vibration of the gear being out of balance worked at destroying the bearing which holds the gear causing my truck to feel worse and worse. So this is what I think caused my issue.
Where to go from here? Its like they told me back in school the 3 C's CCC. 1.Complaint: vibration trans noise. 2.Cause: gear missing teeth and bearing failure. 3.Correction: I'm not sure.
As much as I hate to do it I'm thinking about reassembling it and bringing it past a local transmission shop. I don't have the gear / bearing pullers, I don't have a fancy snap-on parts washer, I don't have sources to discounted parts, I don't have bearing drivers, or even a feeler gauge. Heck I don't even have a work bench or big vise. The trans is up on a old cheaply made dresser my girlfriend was storing at my house. Sure.... I could possibly buy the tools with the labor cost I'd save. But, I don't have months to work on this project or trial and error sessions to work thru. Or the coin to buy the "good" tools I want to keep in my shop. If I put it back together and it explodes taking out all the gears I'll pick up the tab. If they do it it's warranty. I will admit I'm not a expert at how much needs to be replaced. As far as I'm concerned if this happened to 1st gear with 170,000 miles. The rest could be like ticking time bombs and I don't want to figure out when they will go. But, if the quote seems retarded to get it fixed say over $800 then I'll buy a parts washer and a ton of pullers, special tools, $500 in parts and go at it. But, a shop seems like the better option for a trans that will be running on borrowed time in the future as I'm not liable for its future faults within the warranty period. Just thinking out loud here.