Hey, all. I have two problems with my transmission. I'm taking the car to the dealer on Monday, so I thought I would ping the community and see if anyone else has a similar experience.

Originally it was very difficult to engage 5th and 6th gears. I would put firm pressure on the stick and hold it in place, and it would take a long time before the transmission would finally go into gear... At least two or three seconds. My salesman told me it would loosen up over the break in period, and it actually has gotten a little bit easier.

But on to the immediate problems:

First: My '05 has about 3000 miles on it now. Ever since I picked up the car, the transmission has made a LOT of noise when idling in neutral with the clutch out when the car is stopped. When I put the clutch in, I can hear the transmission sort of grind to a stop. The car is like 5 times louder when the clutch is out then it is when the clutch is in at a stop.. When you put your clutch in at a stop, do you hear a big change in your transmission's sound?

When I installed my iPod adapter, I drove the car with the plastic trim piece around the base of the shifter off to the hardware store and back, and my transmission sounded like mechanical gear-lashing death down there. My last few cars have been either front wheel drive or mid engine, so I've never sat so close to the transmission that I could hear it before.. Or is it that Honda and Toyota transmissions don't sound this awful? I've never been so careful with a car because I'm terrified it's going to break all the time!

When I installed my iPod adapter, I drove the car with the plastic trim piece around the base of the shifter off, and my transmission sounded like death down there. My last cars have been either front or mid engine, so I've never sat so close to the transmission that I could hear it before.. Or is it that Honda and Toyota transmissions don't sound this awful?

Second: A few times in the last few days when shifting from 4th to 5th, I'll push the stick towards 5th, but it's like pushing it against a wall. There's simply no 5th gear there, and I can hold the stick there as long as I want without feeling a change. I will shift back into 4th, then into 5th again, and it will engage normally. Anyone experienced this?

Third: I've noticed a few times that when I'm backing up in reverse and I put the clutch in, there's a LOUD lashing release.. I imagine it sounds like the drive-train is bound up, and when I push in the clutch a bunch of tension is being released. I can feel it shudder through the car when it happens. I heard this happen when a salesman was backing up in another one of the '05 cars that I test drove before buying mine, so maybe it's endemic to the car somehow.. Have you heard this?

Thanks,

Collings

 

first- gear rollover. normal can be lessened by a change of fluid to a synthetic like royal purple. if there is awhine with clutch IN thats a throwout bearing issue.

you are sitting right on top of the tranny with a lever that is DIRECTLY connected to the tranny. you never have been here before.

second- it could be that you are not shifting correctly. you may be pushing over tooo far. have another 8 owner try it. it could also be a synchro problem or a shift fork problem.

third- i have no idea what you mean by lashing sound.

 

Thanks for responding! This morning my dealer said the transmission noise is normal in some of the six speeds, including the Miata. I didn't think about fluid.. I'll suggest that to my dealer when I pick up the car.

He also suggested I might be shifting wrong to induce the 5th gear engagement problem. If there isn't a problem with my car, I'm more inclined to belive that this transmission is different from the 10 or so other manual transmissions that I've put many hundreds of thousands of miles on. I have a friend that has an RX-8 that I've yet to drive, and he says the shifter is the best part of his car. It's the worst part of mine. It's stiff and notchy and slow to engage. When it doesn't go into 5th, it feels very wrong. I can roll along with the clutch on the floor and wiggle the shifter, or hold it against the gate all day long putting as much pressure as I want on it, and it will not go in. I have to downshift to 4th and then back to 5th. I'll report back with my dealer's response, although I imagine it will be "could not duplicate" since I can't get it to happen repeatably. Such is the way of things...

I strated thinking about the driveline tension that I feel when I'm backing up.. I wonder if it has something to do with the limited slip differential. When I get my car back from the dealer I'll try an experiment and report back.

 

There's a gigantic sticky about transmission problems here, have you looked at that? Some people have shifter fork problems and it seems like you could be one of them. When you say clutch out, does that mean you're pushing the clutch all the way down? The throwout bearings on the RX-8s are also a bit of a problem spot. Best of luck to you.

 

is that really necessary

 

Try double declutch to see if you can engage 5th gear, if possible then you have a bad synchro, if not then its more likely the fork.

 

http://www.grandamadventure.com/GA_Daytona_Race.html

Check the way he holds the gearstick in the videos. IMO he cups his palm over the gearstick and when upshifting he is not using much "brute" force to gate the stick in gear. I use this method when shifting gears in the upshift. Just let the "spring" do the gating for you when upshifting. All it needs is a tiny push to the right when going from 2>3 and 4>5. The gearbox IMO has a very accurate action.

Downshifting... is just as easy.

 

I just re-read my post.. Can you tell I was distracted in the middle of it? Sorry it seems a little insane.

The dealer said they couldn't reproduce the "like a wall in 5th" problem and that there was nothing they could do, but since I got it back the transmission has felt different and it hasn't failed to go into gear once. The service manager pushed the stick into each gate with the clutch OUT while the car idled, hard enough to load the engine, saying he was trying to feel the condition of the syncrhos. It seemed like a pretty awful thing to do to a transmission to me, but I imagine it doesn't compare to a year's worth of shifting.

And wow, would I not look to racing videos to learn how to shift your street car! That guy appeared to be brutal on the shifter later in the race! Everything, including the engine and transmisison of a racing car is a "consumable". If you want your transmission to live a life of reasonable duration, I recommend being a little more gentle on both upshifts and downshifts! It takes some TIME for the synchros to match the transmission's shaft speeds! When engaging gears 1,3,and 5, I think I just push it forward gently with the palm of my hand for as long as it takes to engage. For 2 and 4, I pretty much shift with two fingers, again without too much force. I find 6th requires a little more attention, at least in my car. I wrap my hand around the side of the **** with my thumb down, and pull down and right.

That was a cool web page, though. He says he's a rookie right on it. That spin was SCARY! What was with all the muscle that car had? He walked past other RX-8s in the field. I wonder if they were even worse? And man! That seems like a very unreasonable amount of damage for the car to come back with at the end of a club race. Seems like a pretty bad day overall.

 

For what it's worth, I finally figured out what the problem was. I would always start out by backing my car out of the garage in reverse, which you well know you access by pushing down on the stick and moving the shifter to where 5th gear is. Occasionally, I guess something would stick in the shifter mechanism, so when I would go to shift to 5th for the first time it would just bonk. The problem completely went away on it's own, and it's been great ever since.

I know this is old.. Just wanted to update the thread in case someone came searching in the future.

 

switch to Redline 75W140NS gear oil, it is intended to help reduce the noise, the extra high heat viscosity will extend life as well, the NS version means it doesn't have limited slip additive which is better for the synchros too

these trannys are consumables for road racing, they go through one every other race