Hey guys... I was driving today and I was going pretty fast (60 MPH in 3rd gear) and, when I tried to shift into 4th gear, I didn't get it fully engaged. I grinded the gears for a second or two... anyone here ever do that? How bad is that for the tranny?

 

I have also done his to my fit and I do not believe that it should affect the transmission to much as long as it isn't an everyday occurrence. I had an 89 Celica that I ground the gears on a few times. When it came time for a transmission fluid change there were no unusual amounts of metal chips in the fluid. Most gears can sustain a little bit of abuse here and there, but if it happens on a regular basis then there could be serious problems. Some things that can go wrong then are broken teeth or prematurely worn teeth, clutch and throw out bearing.

 

grinding a gear once isn't really something to be nervous about

lots of times a day, now that's different

 

I probably ground the gears in my Toyota Corolla (before I bought the Fit) a dozen times over the 14 years I had it. I traded it in for my new Fit ~6 weeks ago. The Toyota had 293,000 miles and the original clutch (and it wasn't even slipping when I got rid of it). I never had any problems with the manual transmission in my Toyota so I hope the Fit is just as great in this area!

 

like they said, don't worry if you accidentally grind it once every blue moon. your transmission is still fine.

 

haha ohh man you could be lucky.. i did that to my truck once because i was trying to deal with ridiculous traffic and my transmission was never the same.. it shifted fine and everything seemed ok but it made a loud whining sound in all of the grears except for 4th. it was sooooooooooooooooo annoying. i'm very careful with how i shift in this car after having that experence

 

the best advice i ever heard (was it a article in car & driver several years back, eh, i dunno??) is to treat the shift knob like it's a egg sitting on top of your shift lever. make sense? you wouldn't want to break the egg so DON'T USE TOO MUCH FORCE when changing gears. if it doesn't go initially, then either double clutch or try blipping the throttle to match revs. if you grind consistently you'll end up not being able to shift into certain gears at all eventually...

i notice that since the weather has turned cooler that my MT is a bit notchy until it gets warmed up. i'm not about to start searching for redline mtl or anything, but its enough so that i take my own advice listed above to maximize my tranny life...

my 2 cents...brian

 

The Fit's tranny is cheap as all hell to replace anyway so grind away!

 

No big deal if you accidentally grind the gears once in a while. Manual transmissions are built tough enough to compensate for some user error. I didn't keep track of how many times I grinded gears in my last car... it was definitely more than a dozen times in 5 years.

 

Try not to chip the tooth of the gears.