First off I'm new here but have been a lurker for a while. I've got an 18 Mirage ES 5 speed manual with just under 10k miles on it. It's been a great car so far and I look forward to contributing to the forum in the future.
Now with that out of the way. I suddenly have been having an issue with my transmission. The type of traffic I deal with on my city is an unusual mix of way too many cars all travelling double the speed limit. We all know the car is a little underpowered and there are times where we have to get on it pretty good to get out into traffic from a side road without getting slammed in the rear. I know how to rev match, I used to race cars and I also was a trucker for a few years so driving stick is not new to me.
So a couple days ago I was trying to get out onto a busy road. I was heading home from work, with an extremely painful kidney stone, so I probably wasn't sitting quite the same as I normally would be and also wasn't exactly in the clearest state of mind due to the pain I was in. The car and trans were fully warmed up (It's still hot down here in FL). I finally got an opening to pull out onto the main road, this time as well as normally, I give it about 3/4 throttle, shifting around 5000rpms with quick but gentle shifts to get up to about 65mph (typical traffic speed is about 75 on this road).
Anyway I don't know if I just was being uncoordinated or if my arm was out of alignment from my normal muscle memory but when I was going to third I either hit the gate area between 3rd and 5th or I hit third but was already kinda off the clutch. Anyway I got a light grind and quickly pulled it back into the neutral area and the attempted the shift, this time proper and normal. I feel like 99.99% of the time this happens to a driver, it kind of startles you (or snaps your attention to it) and you correct it and go about life. However for whatever reason I started having trouble getting it into gear after. It felt like every gear had an extra, second notch to get into gear and if you let off the clutch in the first catch it would grind. Sometimes now I have to skip a gear because it just refuses to go to maybe 2nd of I have to try going to 5th an extra time. At first I thought maybe something in the linkage got messed up.
Now there's another thing I didnt notice right away but if I'm in reverse the car feels jerky. If I park on a hill, clutch pressed down and in reverse gear and let the car roll back from gravity I feel an odd pulse in the cars rolling motion and also hear a metallic clank probably every full turn of the wheels. If I'm in first with clutch in, or neutral with clutch in or out and roll back I don't get anything. The pulsing feels sort of like when you went giving it quite enough gas backing up and it lightly bucks as it tries to tractor at idle rpm. One other thing I notice maybe once every 3 or 4 stops, if i come to a full stop in 1st gear with the clutch in, as the cars motion just stops, it feels like the car wants to lurch forward for a moment. It's very light, sort of like if you were stopping and had the clutch like 95% disengaged.
Before I take it to the dealer (huge hassle if its something I can do myself, I'm pretty mechanically inclined, I just haven't dealt with FWD transaxles and linkages much). I also am about broke at the moment so I don't want to get a huge bill from a dealer unexpectedly deciding it's not warranty or something along those lines. Sorry for the length, just wanted to be thorough.
Cliff notes:
*Botched a shift to third, nothing extreme or overly abusive.
*Car now feels like the shifter and trans aren't in harmony with each other
*Sometimes hard to get into certain gears, a lot more notchiness
*Weird clanking noise and bucking rolling backwards in reverse with clutch on floor but not if in neutral or a forward gear.
*Moneys tight, would prefer to fix myself unless this is something major.
*I am extremely grateful for any help.
2018 Mitsubishi Mirage ES
Reply With Quote