Input shaft bearing

Pinion depth on differentials can have the same symptoms. Are you sure it's coming from the front?

 

1,2,3,gears have a solid whine sound, 4th is a little more faint, and 5th is a solid whine sound again. The manual transmission fluid has never been changed but its full and is clean.
the sound is coming from the front of the transmission or where the clutch is.

 

So, you have it narrowed down to either the pilot, or the input shaft bearing.

 

My bet would be input shaft bearing. IIRC, the input shaft bearing is behind the oil seal. The pilot bearing is forever alone, getting f'd by the input shaft with no lube.

 

This is how I feel as well.

That said, our 2004 at work has been whining for the last 40K miles. You have some time to budget for it.

 

hey, its prob not going to help this, but I would never leave fluid in a transmission that long or that many miles. Its always hard to judge how long a clutch will last, or how many miles it will go, most of it depends on the driver, riding the clutch at takeoff, or my favorite holding it half-way in to hold it on a hill. and its very hard to guess when it will die, one on my old car went 280,000 miles, and one morning it started making all kinds of noise and 2 days later I COASTED DOWNHILL and turned into concord nissan! and it was all 3 wearing in tandom... but I would get it at least checked out so you have some idea of what you need to plan on doing, its been my experance in life when you really need to go somewhere is when it is going to die.