Mine seems to shift into "Reverse" very easily most of the time. I do part it in 1st gear though, so maybe that helps? I'm almost always going out of 1st and directly into "Reverse" when I need to back out.

I'll have to pay more attention and see if I notice the issue when I've been in neutral for a while before trying to get it into gear.

I'm sure that I could Google this, but do you know if non-Evo Lancers share this same transmission quirk? I don't use my Evo in the winters, but my GTS was very hard to get into reverse quite often as well.

 

A lot of FWD or in this case transverse mounted engines do this setup because it keeps the transmission size compact without having to add another shift fork or gear to the mainshaft/countershaft assembly.


I learned this after disassembling my civic's transmission for a rebuild and noticed there was no reversed and it used an idler gear that was actuated by a sleeve over 1-2nd shift selector that bumped the sleeve to turn 1st gear backwards to engage reverse.


The difference with my Honda was that 1st-2nd's synchronizer hub had teeth on it for the reverse idler gear to engage, unlike the Evo where it mates to 3rd gear.