Ouch... that bearing is toasted! I like Kary's method for pulling the bearing. I would have spent way to much time making a puller to do the same thing.

Spot on that most bearing failures are caused by contamination and a gear box is a nasty place since the gears are goint to spit out metal. The worst time is when the gears are new and the teeth need to burnish in.

You can get a sealed bearing for the 4 cyl tranny input shaft. That is the first V6 unit I have seen and I am impressed that they went to seals on most of the bearings.

If I remember right the original 4 cyl mits trans used ball bearings on the counter shaft. I am sure the bearings were smaller than those used on the V6 unit and they did fail pretty fast if you used one behind a turbo 2.6. 12,000 miles was about as long as i ever got.

Good luck,

Kevin