Folks,
Just a unusual quesion for all the tranny guoro. I recently replaced my tranny w/ a rebuild, and notice a difference from my old tranny vs the new one. The problem is when I am in gear, and cruising, when my foot is not on the gas, I can pop the gear in neutral in any gear, but not when I am accelerating. I find the weird because my old tranny did not use to do that. I replaced the shift spindle, all new shifter bushings and wedge coller ring. Any idea why this is happening? TIA.

 

Hey your on the Bimmerforums too! Well most manual transmissions will let you pull your car out of a running gear into neutral. This is how you can shift your car if the clutch goes out, if it was doing it when you are accelerating then I would say its a syncro problem. It's is normal, mine does it any way.

 

As long as its not popping out of gear on its own there's nothin wrong

 

I'm not clear on what's wrong. Is it that your tranny shifts into neutral while coasting, and your old one would not do that?

Anyway, I would buy new shifter detente springs and install them. They sometimes flatten and you can replace them very easily on the car.

Dave

 

what your describing sounds completly normal, as dgeesaman said the detent springs could be slightly worn but on a perfect gearbox if the drive train is unloaded ie level ground coasting you can still shift into N pretty easy. If it does it under load such as accel you have worn out syncro's

 

Thanks guys, sorry for the confusion, when coasting in any gear, aka, my foot not on gas, I can just shift from 1st, 2nd , 3rd ,4th or 5th into neutral. However, if I am on gas, accelerating, it will be impossible to shift into gear without depressing the clutch. I guess it is fine, I was just never notice such occurance before. Dgeesaman- which is the shifter detente spring? I replaced the shift select spindle which is the one to the left, but there is another one on the right without the spring, is that the one? TIA.

 

No, these are different. These are the springs that push a ball-bearing into each of the shift rods so that it helps lock the shift rod in each gear position. These spings are always at least a little bit compressed, and can relax and become shorter - leading to bad shift feel, and in the worst case, the gearbox will tend to shift into 5th gear by itself.

There are 3 of them, you can see 2 of them on FSM page J-16 as Item 19. You'll see the 3rd one unmarked and on the bottom side of the housing right below the other two. Oil may want to run out of the tranny when replacing the lower one, so be ready for a little leakage and plug it with your finger. But I don't think that will be necessary.

The part number is 0103-17-411.

Dave