Transmission Compression Springs

[Casa de Mesa]

sapote thanks, I did pull them, but didn't photograph them. I will get pics for others using this thread in the future.

All those pieces are completely fine, much to my disappointment... I was hoping it was something simple like a mangled spring, rod, ball bearing.

My assumption with these still disassembled, is replacing these bits good preventative maintenance?

[Casa de Mesa]

I'll drop this here as I wasn't able to find any videos or guides during the job that showed the exact locations + sizes of the various mounting bolts for our Getrag box. When doing this on jack stands you're snaking extensions in more or less blind because of how tight the transmission tunnel is, and I lost a ton of time trying to seat the e-torx sockets onto the upper bolts, which were all gunked up with accumulated grime. Carefully lifting the engine as high as possible to let the transmission hang down (without mangling the fan) helps a lot.

To further complicate things one of my topside E14 bolts was mangled either by a previous mechanic or one of my attempts to break it free, which was a massive head scratcher as I couldn't get the socket to seat properly. I ended up risking it with a E16 socket and got lucky I didn't strip it and completely screw myself over.

This is SO HELPFUL, thank you!! Greatly appreciate the pointers. Love that these are all different sizes and probably with different torque specs (haven't looked that far into this project yet).

I may wait on this and drop the motor and trans altogether as a unit. I have another larger project I'm considering (full respray) and would need the motor out for that. However, I'm trying to determine what exactly my issue is NOW so I have parts on hand if need be.

[Casa de Mesa]

Previous moron probably used a regular socket, only way to mangle a torx bolt.

+1 lol

[Casa de Mesa]

Just something to add...the detent springs aren't necessary to shift. Just makes it MUCH easier to find the correct gate. Shifters like CAE essentially have the detent springs built into the shifter assembly.

And I no longer have the # of posts of the devil...I'm superstitious.

LOL, I laughed pretty good at this... 667

Yep, I'm there. I was hoping that something mangled prevented the shifter from getting to where it needed to be. That would explain my 3rd and 5th gear only issue, at least to some degree. Plus this is easy stuff to rule out before moving onto bigger fish...

[sapote]

sapote thanks, I did pull them, but didn't photograph them. I will get pics for others using this thread in the future.

All those pieces are completely fine, much to my disappointment... I was hoping it was something simple like a mangled spring, rod, ball bearing.

My assumption with these still disassembled, is replacing these bits good preventative maintenance?

If they look good I reuse them.
Then the only potential issue is dragging clutch. Have you checked?

[Casa de Mesa]

If they look good I reuse them.
Then the only potential issue is dragging clutch. Have you checked?

Ok cool, will reuse them. Thank you!

And I have not yet tried the dragging, will likely be this coming weekend before I can get back to the car again. Work.....

[Casa de Mesa]

Casa, to find out of the clutch dragging is your issue, jack up both rear wheels:
1) tranny in neutral, turn the free moving wheels and get a feel of the viscous drag. If the clutch is total released then you should have similar drag when turning the wheels.
2) engage 1st gear, have 2nd person press down clutch pedal to stop (or the position that you normally push it to), then turn the wheels to see if it takes much more torque to turn the wheels or similar amount as above (1). If much more then clutch is dragging.

Finally had a chance to get back under the car.

For step number two above, I engaged first gear and tried to spin the wheels. There is more drag in first gear with the clutch depressed (step 2) then there is with the clutch released and in neutral (step 1). My question is...

How much drag is acceptable in step 2? Should it be the exact same amount of drag or slightly more? It's not hard to turn the wheels by any means, but there is slightly more resistance. I would think there should be some level of drag, but not entirely sure about that...

For what it's worth, I also bled the clutch from the bottom up before trying this, hoping to chase any air upwards through the slave cylinder and back into the master cylinder.

[sapote]

Finally had a chance to get back under the car.

For step number two above, I engaged first gear and tried to spin the wheels. There is more drag in first gear with the clutch depressed (step 2) then there is with the clutch released and in neutral (step 1). My question is...

How much drag is acceptable in step 2? Should it be the exact same amount of drag or slightly more? It's not hard to turn the wheels by any means, but there is slightly more resistance. I would think there should be some level of drag, but not entirely sure about that...

For what it's worth, I also bled the clutch from the bottom up before trying this, hoping to chase any air upwards through the slave cylinder and back into the master cylinder.

this has more drag than in neutral bc it has to spin the 1st gear mesh. Now with the helper releases the pedal, while you try to turn the wheel, they slowly push down the pedal until the wheel start to spin, ask to helper to note the position of the pedal at the moment, then how much more the travel distance to where the pedal hits the stop? 1/2"? if less than this then the clutch might not be released completely,.

[Casa de Mesa]

this has more drag than in neutral bc it has to spin the 1st gear mesh. Now with the helper releases the pedal, while you try to turn the wheel, they slowly push down the pedal until the wheel start to spin, ask to helper to note the position of the pedal at the moment, then how much more the travel distance to where the pedal hits the stop? 1/2"? if less than this then the clutch might not be released completely,.

Thank you for this! We did this actually. I think the clutch is fine. The rear wheels spin relatively easily with the car in 1st and clutch depressed. The pedal goes down farther than 1/2" until it his the clutch stop. I removed the clutch stop to see if it made a difference and it did not. So I think either something with the shifter itself is getting hung up, or possibly I have a cracked throwout bearing/TOBl. Potentially the clutch pivot like the OP's other thread. I don't think it's the synchros...

[sapote]

For months now I've been chasing down an issue with my 6MT – it gets stuck in gear or won't enter the next gear when the revs are above ~3-4k, and is particularly bad when dealing with gears 1 / 3 / 5.]

So we known the issue is the clutch not completely disengaged (due to flatten pivot pin and cracked TOB tube). But why it is particular bad for the odd gears 1st, 3rd, and 5th? I can't understand this, except that these odd gears have the main shift rod pulled out the maximum distance to engage the gears. If the roller pin under the GPS sensor is in good shape, then perhaps the worn plastic washers on the shifter rod having too much plays is the cause.

Casa, I agree with you that your issue is not due to worn synchro for all these gears.

[Casa de Mesa]

Casa, I agree with you that your issue is not due to worn synchro for all these gears.

Hey sapote - closing the loop on this. I believe my issue MAY be related to the shifter.

• Checked all the centering springs/detent mechanisms I can get to without removing the tranny.
• Rebled the slave from the bottom up
• Checked clutch stop and engagement
• Checked clutch resistance by hand
• With car on jack stands in the rear:
  • Started the car with it in neutral
  • Depressed clutch and engaged 1st (or any other gear) and the wheels don't move
  • Release clutch and wheels spin
  • Depress clutch and wheels stop (after some rotations)

After looking at countless videos on the web, reading other shifter related threads, I'm pretty sure I have slop in the shift, despite me rebuilding it ~25k miles ago. I do not have a short shift kit / SSK, but will likely go with an AutoSolutions based on extremely positive reviews. The Rogue Engineering is a good candidate too.

Thanks to the OP, sapote and others who helped me chase this down!

[sapote]

If there’s too much plays at the fore/aft of the shifter then it could cause odd gear shifting issue

[Casa de Mesa]

So after all of the things I checked off in my last post, I took the car out this past weekend. At high RPMs in any gear, the tranny was having a hard time coming out of that gear - 2nd, 3rd, 4th... dealers choice! In the short drive, it got progressively worse. After one final pull through 2nd gear (not at WOT, just wound it out at partial throttle), I pushed the clutch pedal to the floor and tried to shift into 3rd and two things happened:

1) It wouldn't come out of 2nd at ~7k RPM (I wasn't forcing it to come out, but it wasn't having it)
2) Depressing the clutch pedal did NOT disengage the clutch. It was as if the clutch pedal was a dead lever that did nothing. Pushing in the clutch repeatedly made no difference, the car stayed in 2nd with the clutch fully engaged until the RPMs came down far enough.

When the RPMs came down to about 2.5k, I was able to get it out of 2nd by slowly rolling on the throttle (just enough to relieve drivetrain stress from engine braking). The clutch pedal then worked slightly, (not well) but enough to get it into 3rd and crudely into 4th. I could feel a fairly strong wobble coming through the pedal in my foot as I released the pedal to engage the clutch.

I then limped the car home in 4th. When home finally and stopped, the clutch was working just fine (disengaging when I depressed the pedal) albeit there was still a wobble present.

My thoughts are it's either a TOB (#3 below), a broken ball pin (#6), or both.

Could it also be the clutch itself? There is no weeping of the slave cylinder whatsoever and keep in mind I just bled it again. At lower RPMs, the clutch releases (although the wobble is getting more apparent, per earlier comments).

[Mayan-Viking]

It would be very interesting if this all came down to a $1.17 ball pin. Regardless, time to pull the tranny...

[bigjae46]

Won’t know until you drop the transmission…but it sounds like a clutch or pressure plate issue.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk