Since I bought my car every once in a while it would make whirling noise when accelerating/switching gears. Not sure how to describe the sound - to me it sounded like a metal gyroscope touching it's casing.

The sound seemed transmission related and it would happen mostly for few miles after car was sitting for a while: either in the morning or on my way from work. Once warmed-up - it would go away.

My guess was low level of transmission oil, so as car warms-up ... oil expands... problem goes away. But unfortunately there is no way to check the level on these cars. So after some reading here I got myself 3 gallons of oil and filter and went looking for someone who could do oil/filter change.

I took it to transmission shop mechanic - he said that it sounds like cavitation and suggested a number of things to replace. I decided to go with oil/filter change(full flush) and now problem is gone!

I figured I will share it as while searching here I saw some folks complained about similar sounds...

(oil: full synthetic Valvoline from Walmart(the one with LT71141 certification), filter from rock auto)

 

I just had my transmission rebuilt and I'm getting a similar or same noise. I'm going to take it in but the noise will most likely be gone by the time I drive all the way over there!

 

I parked my car in the evening next to the shop, so in the morning we could drive it cold around and hear the noise, the sound would come up at higher revs. I was associating sound with gears shifting, but the specialist put the car in low gear and sound would come-up in higher revs without shifting.

According to records I have my transmission was rebuilt few years ago.

Good luck getting it fixed!