Hi, all. I purchased the car new with 150 miles on it last month, and have since put about 1600 on it. I noticed what I thought to be a faint rattling in the dash when accelerating a few days ago. I assumed it was from cheap plastic, and mostly ignored it.

However, today, I was in 5th gear at around 35 mph (normally I'd be in 4th at cruising speed, or 3rs for quick acceleration), and when giving it heavy throttle, there was a distinct (yet soft in volume), coarse, scraping/rattling sound that seemed to emanate from behind the peddles.

I spent some time testing various gears, at various speeds, with various amounts of throttle, and found that every gear had this sound to some degree or another. It's more apparent in higher gears at lower speeds, but still detectable in lower gears at higher speeds.

The best was I can describe it is that when in a gear too high for the current speed, and heavy throttle is applied, a scraping/rattling sound is produced. The more out of sync the gear is for the given speed (i.e. traveling too slowly in too high a gear) the more segmented, coarse, and disharmonious the sound is. As speed picks up, and even as the gear appropriately matches the speed, the scraping/rattling becomes faster and tighter to the point of sounding as one mechanical "hum", which is the rattling that I believed to be from the dash that I described initially.

I don't know if this is a normal sound or not, but it is disconcerting all the same. Will someone offer some insight on their experience and knowledge of the manual transmission for the Mirage, and how I should go about in troubleshooting it if there is an issue?

Thank you.