2nd Gear Lockouts

Zeffy94

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This week, I've started getting 2nd gear lockouts as I crested the 25K mile mark. The situation presents itself as I'm accelerating out of first (usually not even shifting hard, I'm talking 3k RPMish), clutch in, and go to move into 2nd. Instead of slotting into gear, I hit a wall of total resistance and can't get it in. The shifter flies back into neutral where I can try to get it into 2nd again, and sometimes it goes on other times it needs another bump into neutral before it slots in. On top of that, sometimes shifting into 2nd it'll go in, but man it doesn't feel very smooth at all. Like I feel 1st gear levels of resistance moving into 2nd at 12-16 mph.

I've never had this issue before this week. It's happened 8 times already in the past 4 days. It's kind of scary when accelerating because god forbid I NEED to move at that moment, if I'm locked out I'm just making a bunch of noise in neutral for the most part.

Preliminary research is telling me these are symptoms of worn syncros. That's a bit premature to kill the syncros, isn't it? As my first manual car, I would've thought I would've nuked a clutch before a syncro.

Unfortunately if I experience it a few more times I'm going to have to bite the bullet and try and take it into the dealer to see what's really going on (and praying they can recreate it...), but just wanted to know if anyone else here experienced these issues in their CTRs.
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tinyman392

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This week, I've started getting 2nd gear lockouts as I crested the 25K mile mark. The situation presents itself as I'm accelerating out of first (usually not even shifting hard, I'm talking 3k RPMish), clutch in, and go to move into 2nd. Instead of slotting into gear, I hit a wall of total resistance and can't get it in. The shifter flies back into neutral where I can try to get it into 2nd again, and sometimes it goes on other times it needs another bump into neutral before it slots in. On top of that, sometimes shifting into 2nd it'll go in, but man it doesn't feel very smooth at all. Like I feel 1st gear levels of resistance moving into 2nd at 12-16 mph.

I've never had this issue before this week. It's happened 8 times already in the past 4 days. It's kind of scary when accelerating because god forbid I NEED to move at that moment, if I'm locked out I'm just making a bunch of noise in neutral for the most part.

Preliminary research is telling me these are symptoms of worn syncros. That's a bit premature to kill the syncros, isn't it? As my first manual car, I would've thought I would've nuked a clutch before a syncro.

Unfortunately if I experience it a few more times I'm going to have to bite the bullet and try and take it into the dealer to see what's really going on (and praying they can recreate it...), but just wanted to know if anyone else here experienced these issues in their CTRs.
Push it left and down vs just down when doing a 1-2 shift. It's possible you're not hitting the "gate" to get into 2nd. I've had some issues every so often where I miss the "gate" into a gear, it happens. That being said, 1-2 shift I go left and down with my palm/fingers along the upper right hand section of the shift knob, 2-3 shift I push up with my palm up the center slightly towards the left (the centering spring should center it), 3-4 shift I pull right down with my fingers over the front of the shift knob, 4-5 I push with my palm against the lower left of the shift knob, 5-6 I pull with my fingers/palm right and down on the upper left of the shift knob.

Whenever I do a shift, I pull it up to the "neutral" line and will feel the knob give a little resistance, I slow slightly before pulling it into the next gear I want it to go into and it slots into gear. Some transmissions don't mind being banged back and forth, others do. TBH, I'm not sure where the CTR's tranny lies in all this.

Note that the shifts will feel smoother as the transmission warms up as well.
 
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Zeffy94

Zeffy94

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Push it left and down vs just down when doing a 1-2 shift. It's possible you're not hitting the "gate" to get into 2nd. I've had some issues every so often where I miss the "gate" into a gear, it happens. That being said, 1-2 shift I go left and down with my palm/fingers along the upper right hand section of the shift knob, 2-3 shift I push up with my palm up the center slightly towards the left (the centering spring should center it), 3-4 shift I pull right down with my fingers over the front of the shift knob, 4-5 I push with my palm against the lower left of the shift knob, 5-6 I pull with my fingers/palm right and down on the upper left of the shift knob.

Whenever I do a shift, I pull it up to the "neutral" line and will feel the knob give a little resistance, I slow slightly before pulling it into the next gear I want it to go into and it slots into gear. Some transmissions don't mind being banged back and forth, others do. TBH, I'm not sure where the CTR's tranny lies in all this.

Note that the shifts will feel smoother as the transmission warms up as well.
These issues present themselves even after the transmission is fully warmed up, which is where the concern lies., I haven't changed how I shift into second - I always usually do it pretty slow because the transition from 1st to 2nd always felt like slamming into gear would just cause issues. I've learned to apply some side pressure for 1st and 2nd (and 5th and 6th) to help it slot into gear.

If I changed how I operate the shifter then yeah I could see that potentially being the issue, but I really haven't, other than sometimes using two fingers and other times using three or more. It just started happening this week, and since it's happened at least once a day for the past 5 days it doesn't seem like it's just me flubbing shifts.

If it's actually a transmission issue, I'd assume that it will become more frequent over time, which is why I'm monitoring to see if it increases in frequency before even dealing with the hassle that is getting the dealer to look at it. I'd ask my mechanic to look at it but I know they aren't going to just peek inside the trans to check the actual gears/syncros/collars just because I experienced a small amount of lockouts.
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