SHADO

I have a Subaru Liberty/Legacy 92', sometimes when i take the car to redline in 1st, and go to change to 2nd(very fast, like a quick snap), 2nd gear makes a very ugly grinding noise, but a couple of my friends do the exact same thing and they dont get any grinding. It only crunches in 2nd gear though, other gears are sweet. And yes i changed the tranny fluid to Valvoline 75w-90 about 4-5 months ago. Does anyone know why it is doing this?

East Coast WRX

syncro is going out, or you need to change your tranny fluid. do the fluid first as it is the cheapest option. Ask the drainer to see if there are metal sparkles in the oil, if so then your gears or syncors are grinding down.

SHADO

would i only need to replace the synchro on 2nd gear? And would it cost a lot of money?

OldGuy

If it has to be opened up to replace one synchro, it just makes sense to let them do them all. The synchros are not nearly as expensive as the revoval, repair, and install.

It would be a shame to save a few bucks onlt to have to do it again soon.

AWDForever

How do you install/replace synchros in the transmission? Going to have the tranny out to do a clutch....how do I do the synchros? What would cause the tranny to occasioanly slip out of gear (or be real easy to push out of gear into neutral while going down the road)?
Ex: 4th. gear, 45mph, chop throttle, pops out into neutral....

ANY ideas???

Thanks!

OldGuy

No disrespect intended, but you probably don't want to do this yourself. Getting a gearbox right is damned difficult. The clearences are very precise and very important.
Personally, I let other people do it.

Probably someone will scream at this. The most common cause for the trans jumping out of gear, other than some traumatic damage, is the habit of driving with the shift **** in hand.
Even a little pressure, over time, will contribute greatly to this.

My daddy taught me, and of course this was on Model-T's and such (Slightly kidding), not to rest my foot on the clutch or my hand on the shifter.

jspecracer7

As a comparison, I'd rather pull my engine than pull apart my tranny

SHADO

How does resting your hand on the gearknob damage the gearbox? I do this quite often, im not denying it but ive never heard of this before, what kind of damage does it do?

OldGuy

The gears, with no other force being applied, run together in perfect alignment.

Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that you drove down the road with the trans in 3rd gear and pulled on the **** with 50 lb. of force. The force on the shifting mechanism is trying pretty hard to pull the trans out of gear. This is applying a lot of force against the faces of the mating teeth and wear will result. With enough wear, the engagement of the teeth is a looser and the trans is more likely to lose that connection when you accelerate/decelerate and something other than that steady-state load is being applied.

If you do the same thing with 1 lb. of force (Like just resting you hand on the **** - your hand/arm weigh a few pounds) the same thing will happen, it will just take longer.

While it's not releated to wear on the trans, it's generally a pretty good idea to have both hands on the wheel anyway.

SHADO

Wow i never knew that, whether or not its proven to damage the tranny i surely wont do it anymore, but the only reason i do it is because i only eve drive with one hand anyway, guess i'll have to put my left hand on the hand brake

fast legacy

hey shadow, is that a 2wd legacy. ive got a 93 with 2wd and i recently changed my tranny fluid. i went to mobil 1 full synthetic 75w90. after changing to this my shifts into 2 are really bad. im trying to on my next gear oil. i think the synth is too slippy

joshmould

SHADO

Yes it is 2WD 92' model, i originally had valvoline semi-synthetic in there, it wasnt very good, so i changed to the Motul Gear 300, this is very good oil, i did notice a difference, gear changes are smoother, the 1st to 2nd change improved but it will still crunch if i try to force it in without waiting for the synchro to mesh, but only 1st to 2nd would do this, all other gears are fine, and my car has 104000kms on it which is pretty low, and i shouldnt be experiencing synchro problems yet, but i am, i doubt that it is simply a matter of changing the oil, but it is very annoying having to put it into neutral before changing to 2nd, but ive gotten used to it so its fine now. Were you having the same crunching problem? what exactly is happening with you? Does anyone know of overfilling the gearbox oil could be causing this? Because the dipstick shows it is a bit over the Full mark.

fast legacy

shado, i just changed my gear oil to full synth and that is when the problem became really noticeable. the tranny has 140000 miles on it, and the engine is brand new... i guess it will be time for a turbo legacy suspension swap. i am going to need the full rear crossmember, some front components such as sway bars, springs, etc. i want to find a 5mt turbo legacy donor car so i will have a bulletproof tranny and slick lsd rear.
were you by chance selling any turbo legacy suspension componenets?

thanks,
joshmould