SO SICK OF THE "SKIP SHIFTING IS BAD" bull crap everyone keeps spewing. If the engine RPM matches the wheel SPEED for the gear you are trying to select... THERE IS NO F*ING PROBLEM. STFU.

This, coming from someone who never skips gears, I row through them all for the fun of it.... BUT, If I ever wanted to go from 2nd gear @ 9k rpm to 6th gear, I KNOW that as long as I let the RPM fall to the right spot.. there is nothing wrong with it.

2 words : REV MATCH.

end of story.

 

Never re-use fluid, too many contaminents, chances stuff can get in it, whether its put in a bucket or bottle or whatever, you never know how clean that surface is and/or how clean the air is. I'm sure there's plenty of people that have done it without issue but from a mechanical standpoint it's just not good practice.

 

Well, your assumption is that I am not rev matching. If that is the case why does it happen only when I shift from the 2nd to 3rd ? It does not happen for all the other transitions.

Also, some people mentioned that this is a common problem with this car. You are lucky that you don't have it.

I read that Redline MTF might help.

What transmission fluid are you using ?

 

OK, I changed the clutch fluid using the two person technique to get all the air out of the system (gravity bleeding didn't work too well).

The 3rd gear notchiness didn't improve.

It only improved a bit after changing the transmission fluid.

As I mentioned in the previous post I read in one of the threads that Redline MTF helps with this issue.

Does anyone have any first hand experience with this ? Any other things that might get rid of the notchiness ?

I tried all the things suggested so far (replacing the transmission, and clutch fluids) and they only helped a bit.

Thanks in advance.

 

I have the same 2-3 roughness, even after all fluid changes. MY 2003 w/ 24k


I have noticed that if I push the clutch down all the way with more speed, I get a little more time to ease the shifter into 3rd (before rpm's drop). This makes the shift a lot smoother for me. Also, in my case, after my tranny warms up for about 10 minutes all the roughness of 1-2 and 2-3rd go away.

It still makes me cringe every time I have to give the stick a little extra push to get into 3rd...

 

There is engine RPM and internal transmission shaft rpm. You can rev match perfectly, but have a big gap in internal transmission speed that is borne by the synchro (instead of the clutch).

In order for rev matching to eliminate the tranny / synchro problem, the shaft would have to decel at the same rate as the engine, which is not the case when the parts are decoupled (clutch in).

Don't skip shift, especially on the way up.

 

Finally I managed to fix the 3rd gear notchiness.

After a lot of reading through the posts I did the following two things:

1. Replaced the transmission fluid with Amsoil Synchromesh MTF.
2. Adjusted the clutch rod to give more clutch travel.

After step 1 the shifting was noticeably better with a buttery feel to it - I love it. After this step I still had some notchiness when shifting from 2nd to 3rd so I decided to adjust the clutch rod to have no play as recommended by some posts.

This is where it gets tricky. I initially adjusted it so the clutch pedal has no free play. This technically lengthens the travel of the clutch pistons so the clutch decouples properly when you switch gears. The problem with this approach is that it does not allow for heat expansion.

For example I adjusted mine when I was traveling down on CA HWY 1 S. Then when I hit Death Valley the clutch started to slip when I was in the middle of nowhere. This freaked me out because I though that the clutch was slightly slipping the whole trip and I managed to wear it out. It turned out that was not the case but the extreme heat was expanding the things out and it was not allowing the clutch to properly engage.

What I did is I readjusted the clutch pedal to sit a little higher and the rod to provide for a bit of play before engaging the master cylinder. This setup will still give more travel comparing to the original one.

Now shifting is butter smooth and 2nd to 3rd gear notchiness completely gone (knock on wood).

This is so much better and I was so frustrated before that I was considering selling the car since the notchiness was killing the whole experience.

Thanks to everyone that took the time to read and/or reply to this post.

 

I just bought an '02 with 60k miles now. I felt the same issue. Not a grind, but I could feel something when going from 2-3 maybe 10% of the time or less. I noticed that my clutch engaged SUPER high, where I barely need to press down (maybe an inch) to shift. Not sure if this is normal or not. I found if I press down slightly more, like 2 inches for insurance, I don't get this grind.

So I definitely think it's down to a clutch engagement issue. Don't know why I don't have issues with any other gears though. So I try to just engage the clutch 2+ inches just to be safe instead of what feels like the minimum 1 inch.

Hope that makes sense. Someone please chime in if I'm being a complete idiot here

 

I heard you are supposed to engage the clutch peddle fully on every shift no matter what. Am I wrong here? I know you can select a gear by pushing the clutch in like 1/2 or 2/3 of the way, but I thought that was bad for the tranny...

 

I'm a stick-shift noob, and I've heard conflicting things. When I got the car, I was pushing the clutch in to the floor and I just wasn't able to drive the car smoothly that way. I then tested it out and "found" that my clutch engages very close to the top. So I started engaging about halfway (about 50-60%) instead of all the way down to the floor.

At Floor vs. Let Go
0% |----------------------------X---| 100%


Please enlighten us. Hopefully I haven't been doing any damage (though I was told by a BMW gearhead that it's OK)