Have you got a notchy gearbox!
hey everybody recently i had my engine overhauled and turbo changed for which my mech (bayside performance autos or bps) dropped the entire engine out to do the work in which they did a fantastic job, labour is very steep tho as they work on cars of the exotic/prestige kind.
Anyways long story slighty shorter, when i got the car back they told me there was a problem with the gearbox and that it was going to need a rebuild, this came as a shock because when i bought the car into them there was no problem, no noise! yet when i got it back horrible noise when shifting 1st to 2nd grinding and notchyness and wouldnt let me shift 1st to 2nd without a fight whilst going slow.
Would seriously take about 7seconds to shift. Every other gear was unaffected and would shift normally. After discovering this i babied it everywhere to avoid grinding the gears, about a week later i rang the mech and said why is this happening, what could cause this to happen after it had no problems before. He argued with me saying it just needed a rebuild but i refused believe that was the case so i researched everything that was on my invoice down to who made the oil what is in it etc.
I discovered that they had put a thicker oil in the gearbox 75w-90gl4 (technically not their fault as that was the original spec when the gen 1 came out) mazda sent out a service bulletin back in 2008 changing the spec oil to 75w-80 gl4 across all models with manuals.
So i took it down to mazda the next day to get it done while i was there one of the technicians who used to own an mps reccomended 75w-85, so thats what i did and i helped alot with shift feel made it feel like butter even in this cold weather but still it would grind!.
After a few more arguements with my mech they still refused to belive that its anything but needing gearbox rebuild.
After another week of scouring this forum and the interweb i found a video starring JBR on how to adjust the shifter cable, THIS WAS THE KEY!, this is what took away my grinding and general gearbox trouble i know it is nothing new to most of you with short shifters but for those who have recently bought a second hand mps or you are just having troubles with your box then please try this before you get a rebuild, it costs nothing and may save you thousands, although it maybe already too late for some as if you dont fix the grinding relatively soon it will destroy the gears but even if this only helps one person then ill be pleased. So now im back to my powershifting ways and hard launches with out a trouble from the beast at all (i think it enjoys being driven hard lol)
Sorry To every one who read this post before i was able to edit it on a real computer my tablet hates forums for some unknown reason haha?
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Originally Posted by 01KDT
