Hi,

I was just talking to a guy with an rx-7 for sale, and he said when it is cold it has trouble going into second gear. Is this common?

Thanks

 

Nope.

 

Never really had problems w' my second gear. I have the 5th gear grind and my third gear is a little notchy.

 

Hello-

It means that it's a typical high-mileage tranny. 2nd gear syncros are almost always the first to go by *normal* wear and tear on just about all manual transmissions. This is because it's the most common gear to shift into with the car moving (unless you always stay in 1st :-) and because the steepest gear ratio change is always 1st to 2nd.

In other special cases, such as the FD, there are other problems... for instance, the 5th gear syncro in the FD often goes catastrophically (i.e. NOT normal wear and tear) due to design weakness.

So yes: it's common for a high-mileage manual transmission to have a stiff 2nd gear syncro, whether it's an FD or not.

Take care,
Shad

 

Thanks alot for the reply.

The only problem is that this car only has approximately 30,000 miles. He said that once it warms up it is normal. Hmmmmm.

 

I have the second gear grind as well and it does get better as the car warms up. It's easy to live with, so it's not the first thing on my list to fix.

 

I notice the same thing on mine. Unfortunately it's quite common, but I'm not convinced it's normal. A change of gear oil seems to fix it for many people.

I have noticed these gearboxes get clunky if you make the 1->2 shift too slowly - a nice smooth snap into 2nd rarely grinds for me.

Dave

 

I have the exact same prob, as well as many others. When cold, 2nd gear is notchy. From what I've heard, changing to the NEO synthetic gear oil(availible from Mazdatrix) will cure/lessen the issue. Unless the gear grinds, I wouldn't let it deter it keep you from buying the car. Unless of course there's other issues.....

 

mine is notchy in the cold even with neo oil in it. btw mine only has 45000 miles on it.

 

I really appreciate all of your responses. The car I am looking at is a gorgeous low mile R2. If I can get it for the right price, I will get it for sure. Unfortunately he wants about $8500 more than blue book, and I know it is worth more than blue book, but still. There are other cheaper ones I like too.

All of your help is awesome though. Thank you very much.

 

same here except 2nd, and 4th would do that till it got warmed up. i switched to neo and 4th went away but i still get a little noise going into second when cold. i dont think its anything to stress about but i agree with degeesaman that it isnt normal.

 

I'd say it is somewhat normal. I've had 20 FD, the first couple times I shift to 2nd it'd be just a bit stiff. No grinding or anything but some notchiness.

The big test is to rip it to redline after it is warmed up and shift then, if it grinds that means the syncro(s) are worn.

 

I agree with turbojeff on this one as well. Some amount of stiffness can be expected. On my M3, it takes a little bit for it to warm up and make the shifts easy. During the winter months like now, it takes about 20 minutes. During that time, I have to phyically force it into 1, 2 and 3 during that time. Unfortunately, it's normal for that car.

 

Some thoughts on tranny oil magic...

Many people claim that there's one magic brand of gear oil for their trannies. For FD's, NEO is loved. For early Porsche 911 cars (whose 901 and 915 transmissions are REALLY finicky), it's Swepco.

But, that's really missing the point. The big point is this: manual transmissions like gear oils WITHOUT friction modifiers. These are the additives that are added to the vast majority of gear oils that make clutchpack LSD work, plus they also help efficiency a teeny bit. But, they harm syncro effectiveness, especially when the syncros are kinda testy to start with.

Also, although some tranny gurus may say otherwise, we like synthetic gear oils. They generally suck less at low temperatures... they're nicer on that cold, winter morning. So, what we want is a synthetic gear oil without friction modifiers. Redline has some, and they explicitly call them that (the part numbers end in "NS," such as "75W-90NS"). They rock. Switching from an oil with friction modifiers (like most if not all of the stuff offered at Kragen or Pep Boys) to one without any tends to make a notable difference.

BTW, another reason why the 2nd gear syncro is so effected by temperature is its size. The 1st/2nd syncro is much larger than the 3rd/4th and 5th/Rev in the FD. This tends to make it a little harder to shift, especially when cold. The reason Mazda did this is that it also tends to make it harder to break under high loads (the torque multiplication in low gears is higher... so bigger parts are needed to carry the load).

Take care,
Shad