2007 w/MT and sitting at 140k miles

Alright, starting the other day my transmission has been acting funny. I was driving home when it would not go into any gear when I came up to a stop light. Shut the car off, tried putting it into gear and it goes in effortlessly. So I started the car back up while in first (with the clutch pressed in the car did NOT lurch or slowly try to move until I began to let out the clutch). Let out the clutch and started to drive,

After I got going, it shifted without much issue with some slight difficulty going between gears. Parked the car for the night. The next morning I started it up and everything was normal. Shifted fine and had no issue.

After I drove to work, and 8 hours later when I was about to leave, the car would not go into any gear again. With the car off, I could put the car into all gears just fine with pushing the clutch down. Once I start the car up, it will not go into any gears.Intermittently over the past oil change I've needed to press the clutch down more than once to get into 1st and reverse. 1st gear also shudders a bit when letting out the clutch pretty much regardless of Rpms, always done this to a degree but maybe feels a bit worse as of late.

Things I have checked: Clutch pedal doesn't seem to have any issue returning or being soft - feels normal.

Fluid level is fine and looks clean in the master cylinder reservoir. Note I've not done a fluid flush since I've owned it. Master cylinder nor slave (I did check under the boot) shows any external leakage. I've read that the internals of the CMC can still fail without leaking fluid externally though. It's seeming less and less likely that it's an issue with the hydraulics but if it is I am leaning towards the CMC and not the slave being the culprit because fluid is clean/not low and no visible leaks on the slave.Other unlikely culprits: Air in the lines from a bad hose somewhere. Wondering if I should even bother with a fluid flush/bleed or move onto other things? I'd hate to replace both the CMC and Slave without knowing that's going to solve my issue because I will be waiting weeks for OEM parts and then potentially not solve the issue even after replacement.

Lastly I also did change my front struts in the past 4 months and its possible an axle slipped out when I did. I just pushed it back in and didn't think too much about it but did come across someone who had an issue being unable to shift into gear after changing their axles. From what I gathered this was because of a circle clip/band on the spline shaft that needs to be pushed hard into the transmission. This seems far-fetched since the strut change took place over a thousands miles ago and only now started experiencing any issue with being able to put the car into gear. This would seem like either it's in all the way and works or it doesn't but I don't know enough to say for certain.

Otherwise the other issues that comes to minds:

Clutch/popped out clutch spring

Bad throwout bearing

Damaged synchromesh

A gearbox problem

 

since you have never replaced the clutch fluid, I would do that first. If you do it from above, I recommend removing the battery and the air cleaner assy make it a whole lot easier. Poor hydraulic performance could definitely do it.

If you do remove these items, you could go the extra mile and remove the battery tray which will expose the shifter cable assy. If you do this, with the car in neutral, you can manually try and change gears by using the black rectangular looking handle/ lever on the tranny. In & out is like moving side to side with the gear lever, and rotating the lever will select 1/2, 3/4, 5/r depending on position. Changing gears should be like butter at the tranny. You can inspect shifter cable linkages and make sure they aren’t super rusty.

While you are there, I would inspect the clutch slave and you can try and wiggle the clutch fork to see if it looks really out of wack. You could remove the clutch slave (2 10mm hex bolts) and carefully move it aside then remove the black rubber boot and move the clutch fork back and forth by had to make sure it isn’t jamming.

when I did my clutch, one of the metal tabs from the throwout bearing was completely sheared off. It would occasionally get picked up by the input shaft and left many gouges inside my clutch housing. Nothing too dramatic but it may have caused the bearing not to retract properly and contributed to the clutch slippage I was experiencing.

as far as the struts, I would suspect you are talking about the CV joint slipping out. Unless you drained the transmission oil and pulled out the axle completely, I don’t think this would be the issue. A CV joint can slip out with ease but to actually pull out an axle from the tranny takes considerable prying and effort.

another possibility would be old or low transmission fluid. If you haven’t done that recently, I would replace it. Honda MTF is good but I actually get slightly better shifting at extreme cold temps with Amsoil Symchromesh.

if you can get the car on a lift or get under it, you can remove the small splash cover located under the tranny where it mates with the engine, you might be able to take a look at the throwout bearing. If your throwout bearing was fubar, it would be noisy when the engine is running and holding the clutch pedal to the floor.

as far as reverse being hard, it is a spur gear. There is a fork that pushes it down, into another spur gear on the input shaft aka main shaft. It happens at time if you are unlucky that the input shaft spur gear is perfectly aligned with the teeth of the reverse idler gear (the gear that slips onto the input shaft). In that case, the reverse idler just doesn’t want to go down. In that case, just declutching in neutral will spin the input shaft and then when you clutch, with some luck, the spur gear will be in better alignment to go in.

ive once had the problem of the car not wanting to shift into first and it was when the temp was extremely cold and I went into a car wash. I think it just freezes some parts of the shifter linkeages. I think your transmission fluid, clutch hydraulics or shifter linkages might be the issue.

 

Just did a skim over your initial comments (checking posts before heading to work).

There is a clutch dampening valve that is tied into the hydraulic system that you may want to check out. Once the diaphragm starts to fail or get weak, you'll have some weird clutch engagement points and may have some issues shifting.

Additionality with the shift lever assembly (where the shift cables mount), there is a pin within the lever that backs out over time and can cause questionable shift quality as well. This lever is of course what controls the movement of the shift forks within the transmission as well as is sealed with Hondabond (liquid gasket). Remove the assembly, check the 10 or 12mm headed bolt to see if its backed out and go from there.

Give those two items a gander and report back. =)

 

Hi, I just had to rebuild mine. I was having to throw great force into shifting the selector to the left or right.

i found my shift cable was worn/frayed badly and had it refurbished with a new cable but that didn’t do it.

the next two things I looked at, which I did not see you mention. were:

1. Do you have oil in your gearbox?
2. the shift cable is very easy to remove from the top of the transmission, you will need the air box and battery out of the way. But see if you can manually change the gears from the top of the transmission effortlessly.

if you can, it’s going to be shift linkage cables or broken bushings or something in the selector

If you can’t, that’s an internal problem - possibly with the air diaphragm on top, more so than the gear box.

I opted to rebuild because I had about 499000km on the original transmission and had lost most of the gear oil that was verified topped off with a clutch job less than a year prior. YMMV.

 

bummer, it still lasted quite an amount of miles (the stock unit)