I've noticed that my car is starting to have a more and more difficult time shifting into gear lately. It originally was just reverse, like most evos, so I would bump it into first then reverse would be fine.
Lately though, it's rough even going between gears on the road. It grinds easily going into reverse. All gears are being difficult, with reverse being the worst.
Just by the feel of it, i would say the clutch seems to not be disengaging fully. Would it make sense to adjust the clutch petal to try and get it to disengage earlier?

Other important info:
I've got an exedy twin HD clutch (always been very grippy)
I checked the transmission fluid. It was where it should be.

 

how many miles are on the car and have you changed the trans oil?

im sure somone is going to say do a search... im sure this has been covered but ill try to help with what i can.

 

Thanks for your help. Yes, I changed the transmission oil as part of the 60k service, and troubleshooting steps for this.

there were metal specs on the plug, but I understand that's to be expected with the gear grinding as often as it has.

I ran a search and found mostly lots of forums with people having problems in just first and reverse , but not any having problems sporadically but in all gears when the problems occur.

I'm thinking now that I should be investigating clutch issues rather than tranny issues though, so stay tuned. I just found some threads talking about checking the throwout bearing. I'll post when I have a chance to run some tests....

 

what type of oil did you use when you changed it out? did it get better or worse after the oil change or stay the same?

 

I would bet synchros and not clutch. Get Shep's website bookmarked...

 

I put in mobile 1 GL-5 transmission oil.

I don't think it's the syncros, since every gear is difficult, and they all got started having the problem and started getting worse at the same time.

Changing the fluid didn't affect it much. Actually, it seemed quite a bit better for most of the drive home (I changed the fluid at my in-laws' home, about 15 minutes away), but it started to get bad again before I got home, and has been pretty bad since then. I don't see any leaks, but I'm going to check the fluid again before I drive it again.

I followed some threads about testing the clutch disengaging by starting the car with the pedal depressed and the car in gear, to see if it rolls forward at all. It doesn't. It seems that should eliminate the throwout bearing having a problem, right?

I see suggestions to check the slave cylinder. They don't say what kind of things to look for on it though. I'm not a mechanic, so I don't know what to expect from a bad slave cylinder but I'll see what I can find.

Any other ideas in the meantime?

 

Still no luck. I checked the tranny fluid again to make sure that it hasn't dropped any.

Watched the slave cylinder as somebody pressed the clutch petal to verify it's getting plenty of travel.

Next step: somebody suggested in another thread that you can pull the boot off and peek inside to see if the fork tines are bent.

I'm not sure what else to try after that. I'm still doubtful that I lost all of the syncros at once, but what else is there?

 

Fork tines looked straight. I adjusted the clutch petal and can now get in reverse without grinding.

All the gears still feel a little difficult to get in to, but they don't try and stick while exiting a gear now.

I think it was probably a clutch related issue that started making this happen, and I should have adjusted the pedal a little sooner to see if it would help. Now I need to figure out if we did any damage to the transmission driving it with those issues getting worse. I can see the syncros being hurt if driving with a clutch that wasn't fully dissengaging.

I'll stop posting to this thread though, i think if anybody was following along to see what happened should have enough information to help their own issues now.