Clunky Shifts, Reverse and 1st Gear Lock outs

Do you have issues shifting your Civic smoothly?


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elijahw

elijahw

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Always shift into reverse when you are at a full stop. I was moving maybe 3mpg forward and threw it into reverse to back up to a gas station pump. It didn't like that.
I have a slight "bump/click" going from 3-4. Acuity cable bushings didn't help. Temperature warmed up to about 45+ outside and for the past few days I am not feeling the click.
Imagine this. I turn my car on. It is parked. Moving 0 miles an hour. I turn off the parking brake. Put the clutch all the way to the floor and TRY to shift into reverse. It locks out. I put it in 3rd, still going 0 miles per hour parked, then shift into reverse - works perfectly. I would never reverse my car when it’s moving forward.. There is an issue with his gearbox or clutch not my driving
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Loccust

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Installed my Skunk2 shift knob yesterday and that made a big difference so far. I will no more after driving it a bit more since I only went down the block to eat and then back. But, it seems like the weight helps it fall into gear.
 
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elijahw

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Installed my Skunk2 shift knob yesterday and that made a big difference so far. I will no more after driving it a bit more since I only went down the block to eat and then back. But, it seems like the weight helps it fall into gear.
Nice maybe I’ll give that a try too. Thank you.

The service supervisor said the tech couldn’t find anything wrong with it (shocker) so this whole process was a huge waste of time. I did however take the supervisor on a drive and was able to show him my reverse gear getting locked out.

He gave me the number to, allegedly, call Honda corporate to get this all in writing and hopefully they’ll come out with a fix. He said that’s unlikely unless a lot of people complain. 800-999-1009
 

ToastedSi

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at a red light, I was locked out of first gear... I'm not too sure what happened.
 

inertiadrifto86

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I have another appointment to take my Si in for issues with the gearbox next week. First time I took it in they said, "No issue found, make sure owner knows how to drive a manual."

Here's the thread where I talk about it: https://www.civicx.com/threads/gear-lockouts-lockups.21574/

After the appointment next week I'll probably update there and create a new thread for tracking in the Issues/Troubleshooting forum.
 


BoostedSiCoupe

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I have another appointment to take my Si in for issues with the gearbox next week. First time I took it in they said, "No issue found, make sure owner knows how to drive a manual."

Here's the thread where I talk about it: https://www.civicx.com/threads/gear-lockouts-lockups.21574/

After the appointment next week I'll probably update there and create a new thread for tracking in the Issues/Troubleshooting forum.
Typical stealership douchyness.
 

BogdanM

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Owner of 2018 European Civic Sport Plus 6MT here. The car is fairly new, a bit over a month old and ~1800 miles on the clock. Picking up the car from the dealer, I had mixed feelings about the gearbox, meaning:
- gears 1, 2, 3, 5 worked like a charm, smooth, precise, snappy, how it should be;
- gear 4 so and so, it felt like it was catching on something when going from 3rd or from 5th;
- gears 6, Reverse a disaster, it took me several tries to engage them correctly because:
a. For 6th I was afraid to push on the lever to the right because of not going into Reverse and would shift into 4th and even if I did push, shifting out of 5th while keeping the lever pushed to the right for 6th was making the shift to be anything but smooth; After getting used to the car I started to feel the shifter mechanism better and realized that you have to push right on the lever right after it gets out of 5th => slips smoothly into 6th, that’s the path she wants you to take;
b. The Reverse however remained a problem, usually (99% of cases) would not go from neutral to reverse without forcing the lever into it (for example, to leave home I need to back off from the house so it’s not a problem of the car still moving forward). Today I saw this thread and tried the “3rd gear first” trick and realised works like a charm! Now, in my opinion there might be 2 plausible scenarios while this works:
1. There is a design problem with the gear selection mechanism / linkages in which Reverse is locked out in cases when it shouldn’t be (for example when selecting Reverse after getting out of 1st);
2. It has to do with time you spent with your clutch pressed in prior to attempting Reverse; I remember I saw in the manual the recomandation of pressing the clutch in and waiting for a couple of seconds before attempting to select Reverse. Going for the 3rd, neutral, then Reverse equals 2-3 seconds of clutch in time prior to Reverse being selected. I find hard to follow this recomandation in practice though, part of it because it is already built into my reflex after a lot of years only on manual transmission to push clutch in, wait a bit (1 sec), engage reverse, waiting 2-3 seconds before moving my hand needs me to focus on doing that which usually does not happen for such trivial tasks.
In my case I prefer using this trick rather than going to the Dealership to have them fix the problem (if indeed there is one). Both the gearbox and the gear selector mechanism / shifting cables are delicate and precise things, hard for the untrainned personnel to fiddle with and not break anything in the process or make it worse.
Also, after I got more used to the car I realised that the gear selector unit absolutely hates to be guided by the driver’s hand, it needs only to be moved and it finds his way precisely, the list ammount if guidance making the process feel rough (that was the problem with the 4th gear, without realising I was trying to giude it).
 
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dawsonj87

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For anybody wondering about the 3rd gear comments, it is very common for the synchros in the transmission to be lined up after going into 3rd. Whenever my 04 won’t go into 1st, I always go into 3rd and then it goes right into 1st. My brother’s WRX does the same thing, but with 2nd. Every car I have ever driven, save for any Subaru, has had this 3rd gear synchro trick work. It’s nothing out of the ordinary and perfectly fine— it’s all mechanical.

You can test this by, when the car is off and sitting, trying to go through the gears without putting in the clutch. If there is some resistance or lockout, put the car in 3rd with the clutch, and then it should go into any other gear much easier without the clutch. If you have solid cable bushings like the Acuity ones, you should be able to actually feel everything fall into place after lining up the synchros.
 

BogdanM

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I am quite sure Reverse gear does not have synchros because it does not need them. And due to the fact that there is no grind noise from the gearbox ( which is very likely to happen especially for reverse) I think the problem is not inside the gearbox.
 

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I’ve been driving manual for 20 years. I noticed a slight notchiness when I first got my Si last year. A weighted shift knob makes a huge difference. I’ve never had any noticeable lock out problems.
 


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Haven't had issues since I swapped over to amsoil transmission fuild. Much smoother shifter feel. I think a heavier knob will be the cherry in top :)
 

BogdanM

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Been doing some experiments for the las week and it seems that, for me at least, the problem with needing to force it to get into Reverse is being solved by doing what the owner’s manual recommends: putting the clutch in and then waiting for 2-3 seconds before trying to engage Reverse. The trick with the 3rd gear basically does 2 things in this context:
- stops the gears into the gearbox by engaging the syncros of the third gear;
- the whole operation takes a 2-3 seconds, so exactly what the owners manual recommends. I suspect that the recomandation is made to allow the gears into the gearbox to fully stop before engaging Reverse and the lockout machanism is enforcing this recomandation.
So at this moment this seems not a bug but expected behavior.
 

PowerPerLiter

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Has anyone attempted to bleed the clutch?
 

ouelljas

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No issues here to report so far, but I only have 2000KMS on the car and I'm an experienced manual driver. I've owned 3 manual cars and I've driven an 18 speed semi for a living for over a decade. Shifts seem to be getting smoother as everything gets broken in. The car has a great shift feel, but I'd put it slightly below the Acura ILX Dynamic that I used to have, which essentially employed the same gearbox/linkage of the SI's at that time, but with revised bushings. That car had a spectacular, very mechanical shift feel for a FWD with cable linkage. I'm not sure whether the reverse gear on the current SI is synchronized or not, but as others have stated, it's best to come to a complete stop before transitioning from 1st to reverse.
 

babinjm

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I haven’t had any problems with the transmission. Finding sixth is a little harder than I think it should be; however that is probably a me thing. This is my first six speed. All my manual transmissions prior to this one were five speeds. I find this gearbox shift better than all my previous vehicles except for 6th gear.
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