Well, I have to say I'm a little disappointed that the first issue on this "reliable" Honda happened so early!

Basically, out of the blue, the manual transmission on my 2015 EX stopped shifting into first. At a light I tried to shift to start the car rolling, but it just wouldn't go into the gate.

I know this sometimes happens with manual transmissions. The gears / clutch get misaligned or something. However, I wasn't expecting this to happen so soon. I fixed it (temporarily) by shutting the car off, shifting into second and then going back into first, and back and forth, with the clutch in various in/out configurations, and afterwards it shifted almost too smoothly on the way home, offering no resistance whatsoever.

The next day, however, the same $h*+ happened again. Now for the past 4 or so days, the shifter either doesn't want to go into the gate, or it's extremely notchy and offers way too much resistance, and I need to kind of angle it funny and shove it in to get into first. Again, I know this type of thing sometimes happens, but I thought it just happens every once in a while and then you fix it and that's that. This has been consistent and ongoing for 4 days, and i've been driving quite a lot these past 4 days.

My first question is - is there any way to definitively fix this without a trip to the dealership? I'm assuming not.

My second question is - is there any particular driver behavior that can predispose the transmission to doing this? Since I got the car, my father has been driving, and I started to teach my girlfriend to drive a stick (just a little bit, she gave up pretty fast and decided to leave it for another day).

You can imagine what happened with the girlfriend - just some stalling, etc. Nothing that I would think would somehow actually misalign the gear.

My father is a bit of a different case. He's kind of obsessed with keeping the RPMs super low "to protect the engine and transmission." This is excessive to the point that he's under 1K a lot, he shifts often before 2K, and the whole engine and car shimmies and shakes as he gets up to speed. It also tends to stall. He admonishes me (in my late 20's) for revving the engine up, to which I counter "what's wrong with waiting til 5K to shift when the redline is almost 7K and the engine is going almost 4K on the highway for hours at a time anyway?" Family arguments aside, could something about shifting so early and at such low RPM cause this? My gut says no, but I can't think of anything else that would cause this other than just random chance or poor manufacturing, which shouldn't be the case because at the very least the transmission was Honda built.

On a semi-related note - this car seems to buck a LOT more than other manuals while coasting at low RPM in a low gear. Anyone else getting that? Could that be related? (again, my gut says probably not).

Any insight or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks guys!

 

You could let your father know he is likely going to cost you a clutch early. Not good to shift so low and make it buck bog on the way up to speed. Honda obviously isn't concerned with the engine revving if they put the 6th gear in that they did. The reason for the bucking at low speed/gearing is the tight gearing in the car, 4.62 final drive, combined with first gear the multiplication is 16, very steep.

Regarding your main issue, at 2700 miles, don't fiddle, take it to the dealer to get it documented. Even if they can't replicate and fix it this trip, best to have it documented if it waits until after the warranty to really go.

 

Thank you for the quick reply! I figured that he's not really driving the car correctly, but as a dad I guess he thinks he knows best. Which he usually does.. just not with cars, which are a huge hobby for me. I'm glad I found someone to agree with me, so hopefully he will change his ways when I tell him a random stranger on the internet says he's wrong :P

As for the bucking, thank you for the explanation. I've always wondered why some manual cars buck way more than others, and part of me worried that it being this excessive meant yet another issue.

And for the main problem, thanks yet again for the input! I'm guessing since you didn't bring it up, you don't think any of the above issues have to do with the first gear problem, which I'm also glad for. I already made an appointment, and as of today the problem has started occurring so commonly that there's no way Honda won't notice it after 5 minutes in the car. Now I'm just hoping for a quick turn-around so my new Fit isn't out of commission for days on end!

 

No idea what's causing your problem.


But your dad is driving poorly.

I'm a HUGE fan of shifting nice and early, but there's nice & early..and there's way too early which your pops seems to be doing.

If you shift too early, you're putting more load/stress on the engine, which is worse for it & the rest of the drivetrain long term.

 

Actually, random stranger who works in engine design and development. Newer engines are designed with lower and lower piston ring tension to reduce the wall friction and increase fuel efficiency. The downside to the low tension is that at low engine speeds the tension is really low. Keeping the engine speed down so low could cause the pistons to slightly rub the bore wall and/or consume some oil.

Regarding your shifting issue, no, nothing your dad is doing should cause that. I know my car shifts pretty tight, but not like you are mentioning. Maybe there is a bolt loose with the shift linkage causing the levers to not go over to first when you are trying to shift into it. Hopefully the dealer can replicate it quickly for you!

 

UPDATE -
Took the car to the dealership a couple of days ago. They said "oh yeah should take 90 minutes to fix." Turns out a bunch of parts in the gearbox itself are bad. They're special ordering them and I should have the car back by monday, maybe.

YES! That's what I say. But he claims high revs are "worse." At least now I have 2 internet people backing me up. Thank you!

Haha well that makes you a legitimate source of information. For all I had known you could have been some teenagers wiki'ing manual transmissions!

Thank you for that explanation. My dad is an engineer and we are both technically-minded, so it's much appreciated

Re: shifting issue, as I mentioned above, the parts are bad according to Honda. Not even anything loose, just plain "bad" or badly installed according to them. They're keeping it for an extended time and hopefully when I get the car back it'll be good as new! It better be, because <3K miles is still "new" to me.

Thanks again!

 

UPDATE

Honda has taken a keen interest in my problem. Apparently they are taking the entire transmission out and sending it to Honda corporate to completely disassemble. I'm not entirely sure of the wording of what was said, because I had a family member take the car in since I have a hectic schedule and I'm kind of getting the messages through a middleman.

Now.. I know a bit about car, but I'm not expert. However, the only other time I heard of something like this was in a Car and Driver (I think) article. They had a BMW 5 series long term test car which developed a random, large oil leak. Whatever the problem was, it was apparently the first time that BMW had ever encountered that particular problem in that particular car with that particular engine, so they had to send the data and parts to BMW headquarters for analysis so that they could figure out what the core of the issue was, and how to prevent it in the future.

So... if this is the same case for me, I guess I am the guinea pig with this particular transmission issue. This also means that I won't have my beautiful Fit back for quite some time, though the dealership did offer me a decent CR-V loaner car, which is nice because in my experience I've only had luxury car dealerships offer me loaners before.

Aaaand if I'm actually correct in my thinking (probably not) and this is indeed the case, and Honda is able to prevent this particular problem I'm having in future iterations of the Fit... you're all welcome :P