Metal ball on the tranny drain plug magnet. What gives?
 

Any ideas what the heck is going on here?
I found a small metal ball (ball bearing?) on the tranny drain plug along with the expected metallic sludge. I took a picture of that ball next to my key (for sizing). That pic and a screenshot of a transmission schematic are included here. There are a couple "possible" sources of that ball based on the schematic, but without taking the case apart have zero idea what the likely (typical?) source would be for the one on the magnet. More importantly, is this going to become a big deal?

The gear box has never given me any problems in a little more than 1.5 years of ownership, including ~100 autocross runs, ~6 track days, and ~9000 miles total. The 1-2 cold shift was never great, but it always got better after a few miles of driving.

Thank for any ideas you have!

I don't have an answer for you, but that would make me super nervous!

A big wtf from me too.
Did you hear it drop into the pan or was the ball bearing already in the pan?

I heard nothing. The time had simply come to refresh the drivetrain fluids. Was just cleaning off the drain plug, checking out the sludge and found it. I've never replaced/drained my own tranny or diff fluid before, but the transmission fluid was definitely in worse shape than the differential.

If the transmission is working fine, forget about it and keep driving.
Your other 2 options are to lose sleep worrying about it or start doing exploratory and disassemble the transmission.

I already shopped for used trannys on eBay. $500 and an opportunity to do my first transmission swap if it fails... could be worse. I'm definitely prepared to just drive it- heck, I was already.

Would be nice to know wtf happened though.

If it was an auto id have a good guess.

Just do a couple hard pulls back to back, if it still works fine after that. Free weight reduction?

Lucky you got it out before it took a ride through the gears!

You will need a new transmission, sooner rather then later, linky.

Thanks for that. Interesting and possibly helpful- consistent with my expectation at this point at least.

That is a large possibility, especially if this is the first change.

Decent chance it’s the first change. Bought it from the second owner with 32k on all but the engine (that had 70k+). It saw a lot of autocross and track time with them, and still with me.
It’s the only twin I’ve spent any real time driving, other than 20 min in my friend’s FRS. Seems to shift the same as that one from what I can recall.

thankfully they put magnetic plugs in the gearbox!

totalled. time to buy a civic.