changed the pilot bearing? mine went out and it started getting harder to shift then one day i couldnt shift at all, got stuck in gear.

 

Huh see my tranny gets hot after a bit of driving but it's never been hard to shift. I haven't had it long so I'll look into the clutch thing as well as the Royal Purple Black oil.

 

whats the problem then? how do you know its hot?

it seems like there are a quite a few people with the hard shifting problem, but no one knows how to fix it :/

 

What should be the range of full operating temperature of the transmission?? Steady highway for an hour or so!!??

 

i poured some gear oil in the shifter linkage through the shifter hole. I'm about to go for a drive. i'll let you know if it helped at all.

 

the gear oil didn't help

what is the pilot bearing? did it make any noise when it went out?

 

guys, the tranny gets hot because the engine gets hot. it's called heat transfer. as for the shifter being alittle stiff to move left to right, check the nylon ring under the plate that has the 3 bolts in it that holds the shifter in. i had one yrs ago that was like that. if that ring isn't positioned just right, it puts too much pressure on the big ball. u might want to add alittle lube to the under side of the nylon ring where it comes in contact with the big ball of the shifter.

 

and what heat transfer physics class did you get that assessment from??? The tranny gets hot because of friction....friction caused by the gears and bearings of the tranny....

 

qft.

 

yes that too. but when the engine gets hot, the heat transfers thru to the tranny beause it's bolted to it. but either way, all trannys get hot when the car is driven. that doesn't necessarily mean there's something wrong with it.

 

but in this case there is something wrong with it. i dont know if its heat related, but i do know that after a 30 minute drive the shifter gets stiff. i can pull it to the left or right in neutral and it wont return to center. when its been sitting for a few hours(assuming it has cooled off), i can pull the shifter to the left/right easily and it will return to center. i have no idea how the shifting mechanism in these transmissions work, so i have no clue where to start.

 

see the white nylon ring between the big ball and the plate with the 3 holes. check an make sure urs is positioned right and u also might want to put some lube on it. as i stated before, i had one yrs ago with similar problem. if that ring isn't positioned right, it will put too much pressure against the big ball part of the shifter making it hard to move around.

 

its on correctly. i took it out and i put it back in when i poured the gear oil in it.

a guy at work says id could be the syncros, but it doesn't grind or anything. i'm pretty close to just swapping out the trans :/

 

Anyone else have ant insight on this problem? The car has been sitting for almost a year because of this, and I'd like to get it fixed.

 

Sorry to revive an old thread, but i'm having this exact issue in my car. The clutch is a new bonez streetcomp clutch, new master and slave cylinder, new ss clutch line. After driving for about 30 minutes or so, the transmission gets hard to shift. Like the OP said, even in neutral moving the shifter side to side is stiff. Transmission has fresh valvoline 80-90 and i double checked that it is at the appropriate level. I get no gear grinds or anything during gear changes, just takes more force to move the shifter. Only thing i havent checked is the oil in the shifter housing. Can someone fill me in on exactly where/how to do that? Is it going to do any damage driving it like this or is it just going to be a pain to shift?

 

Mine does this too, but only now after it sat for a number of years (it never did it before it sat). I assume it has to have something to do with a part or two expanding when it all gets hot in there, an overheated bearing, an expanded bushing, etc. I have a spare trans to swap in that shifts smooth (hopefully when hot too, lol) and once I do that, I plan to tear down the one in the car now to see if I can figure anything out. Its definitely odd though.

In fact, Im going to flip through the FSM now and see if I can see a potential reason...

~T.J.