Question about shifting/shifter

[Wallie05]

My car is getting up there in miles--nearing 75K--and I've noticed that the shifter doesn't slide through the gates as smoothly as it used to. The feeling can best be described as "gratey" (especially when shifting into first and on the throw into second, less so on three and four). It doesn't always happen, but it happens more and more now, I find. Also, sometimes it feels like the actual stick beneath the knob is a bit loose.

Is this typical for manual trans. cars as they get older? I've pampered the car, and it's not like I beat on the car. I don't even really drive that hard, apart from some races here and there.

Anyway, is there anything I can do to fix this? Can I replace the gate; would that help? I was thinking about getting a sport/short-throw shifter. Would this have an effect? Any thoughts/comments are greatly appreciated.

 

[steelbimmer]

Although my '01 wasn't feeling "graty", I just recently added a short shifter from UUC Motorwerks. Really like the quickness and smoothness of the throws. Ya might wanna consider this upgrade.....

 

[MrElussive]

Wallie, have you ever had your transmission fluid changed? A lot of metal shards and stuff gets into the transmission fluid real fast. Over at G35Driver, a lot of us change our tranny fluid every 12,000 miles.

 

[jrt67ss350]

Yeah, like Emile said, if you've never had the tranny fluid changed, I'd do that.

The "gate" is more a theoretical thing than anything on these cars - there isn't really a "gate" like you see on a Ferrari, so you can't replace it. The "gate" is internal to the transmission - your shifter is actually attached to the transmission through a rod - all of the movements you make with your shifter are translated to a single round shaft that sticks out of the back of the transmission that gets pushed, pulled, and twisted when you move your shifter from gear to gear. The pulling and twisting movements of this selector shaft move the shift forks inside the transmission. The "looseness" of the shifter is most likely due to worn shift linkage components: there are numerous plastic and rubber bushings and washers that wear over time and develop some slop. The small amount of slop in the various joints in the system are addative and translate to a loose-feeling shifter.

In order to refresh the shift linkage components, you have to get the exhaust out of the way, remove the heat shields, drop the driveshaft, and take the shift linkage apart. To replace the bushings that mount the shift console to the top of the transmission, you'd better either have really tiny hands or you may have to lower the back of the transmission. While refreshing the shifter components isn't a technically difficult thing to do, it can be a big pain in the butt to get access to everything.

My shifter is sloppy as hell in my car, and I just replaced the output shaft and selector shaft seal in my car over Thanksgiving. I was thinking about fixing up the shift linkage while I had everything apart, but when I saw how hard it was going to be to get to the transmission shift console bushing, I said "screw it" and decided to just live with the sloppy shifter.

 

[Wallie05]

Thanks for all the replies guys. How much did that thing cost you, Steel? MrE, I can honestly, but shamefully, say that I don't ever remember changing the transmission fluid--not sure if my father did? But as far as I know, no. I'm at 75K now, so I don't know what to make of that...?

Jrt: Great info. I don't have tiny hands and I don't really know much about the mechanics of the tranny, as you can probably tell. How much would it cost to have a mechanic replace the shift linkages? I'm guessing its gotta be pricey. I'll change the transmission fluid ASAP, and see what happens. Thanks again.

 

[jrt67ss350]

To rebuild the shift linkage, you don't need any knowledge about the mechanics of the transmission since you aren't dealing with anything inside the trnasmission, but getting to the linkage may be more work than you want to do.

I imagine that it'll be fairly expensive to pay a shop to do it for you - simply because the process is so labor intensive. They'll charge you HOURS for it since you have to remove so much stuff to even get to it. Took me all day to replace those two seals in the transmission, and very little of that time was spent actually replacing the seals - most of it came from removing the parts needed to get to the seals. I had called around to see how much independent shops wanted to replace those two seals, and they had quoted me between $300-$400 for the job. That should give you an idea since almost all of that charge would have come from the labor to get to the back of the transmission (the seals only cost about $14 for the pair, and the labor to actually replace the seals should only be about 1/2 hour - you'd have more labor than that to rebuild the linkage once you got to it).

Many of the shift linkage parts are the same (or very similar) between the E30/E36/E46. When priced out at my BMW dealer, it'd probably cost somewhere about $100 or so for all of the parts to rebuild the entire linkage system. You might be able to get away with less than all of the parts since I doubt some of them are worn on your car - my entire linkage system is pretty much shot (one does a lot of shifting in 270,000 miles).

If you are looking to get a new car soon (I know you've been talking about it), then I wouldn't even screw with it.

 

[Kirby]

One other thing to check - Does it act EXACTLY the same under hard acceleration and gentle acceleration? If it only happens under hard acceleration, it's likely that the bushings on the transmission mounts are worn, dry rotted, etc. This is due to the transmission twisting under heavy torque and binding the shift linkage.