4th gear grind??

[SexeLilBabeGurl]

Hey guys I am new here, I am getting an 05 STI next month, our dealership doesnt have an STI in stock so I test drove an 05 WRX with 300 miles on it, well right when I was walking out some boy came in handed the man the keys and said, I like it, its a nice car(apparently he drove the car before I was going to)....He goes you should check the clutch though, 4th gear grinds...The man was like well I will let her drive it and we will talk while she is gone..Well EVERY time I shifted into 4th it grinded really bad, the syncro was bad I could tell....Just thought I would share this with you guys, its too bad that a car with 300 miles has been torn up already....I know about the break in periods with these cars and the man didnt ask for my license and he let me go by myself, so I can imagine what that poor car has been through already, I feel sorry for the person that gets it.....On a side note though, it was really fun getting up to 100 in the wrx with no problem, one question though, is the turbo lag as bad in the sti? I noticed the wrx had some off the line....Thanks.....

[Blizwinter]

yeah a stock wrx does have considerable "Turbo lag" but when i drove a sti i didn't feel any felt really even all through. But i perfer to have some turbo lag because it reminds me that i have a turbo car and not a v8.

[Miguel_04_WRX]

Just went to the dealer and as i thought, fourth gear synchro is almost out. Subaru would not cover it but agreed to pay half of the costs and loaner car. Ill be paying about 900 out of my money .

[Richie03]

Bayley, when you say "GM Synchromesh" do you mean this gear lube is a General Motors product?

[Cavadini]

I have a 04 WRX with 5500 miles on it that is also grinding into fourth at high RPMs, whether i shift smooth, or faster. I only have uppipe, downpipe, and catback exhaust as mods so far. To take it to the dealership to have this fixed under warranty am I going to have to worry about them not fixing it because of the exhaust? I hope not as I've bought my 04 rex and 04 forester XT this year. They better love me!! hehe. Thanks

[Miguel_04_WRX]

Good luck getting it replaced under warranty. i was denied warranty and i took my car stock to the dealer. They told me they could tell by the clutch how i have been abusing the car. i rarely use 4th to race. They agreed to cover rental car and about 30% of the total costs.

[Bayley]

Originally posted by Richie03
Bayley, when you say "GM Synchromesh" do you mean this gear lube is a General Motors product?

Yes. However, there are a few manufacturers that make a generic knock-off that complies to the GM specifications. Auto Zone had a generic (Penzoil... I think) alternative that was about half what the GM stuff would have cost me at the dealership. So far, 15,000 very hard miles later and my fourth gear grind is GONE. Yes, gone! It went from a severe grind every time to, to nothing!

Synthetic gear oil is a waste of money!!!

I can't believe how many times myself and other have offered this sooooo simple solution to synchro grinding. Richie, congrats on actually researching this and asking about it. You are a minority.

To everyone else, continue using synthetic gear lube. Synchro manufacturers will thank you for it.

[SchmilK]

I had the 4th gear grind happen to me a few times when driving very civil and calm but from what I could tell upon lots of evaluation of the situation is that 1) 3rd to 4th FEELS like the shortest shift distance out of all the gear to gear travels...(i do have the oem short throw shifter installed) 2) because it is so short and I was driving kinda lazy, i would end up pulling out of 3rd with the clutch less than half way down and timing wouldn't let me get the clutch all the way down to the floor by the time the gear was ready to go in to 4th then it would grind a few teeth and I'd let it go to neutral and then shift smooth. Scared to tell service about it because I only have 9,500 miles. So i'm guessing this was my problem)
Never took off faster than 4000 rpm from stop, but when I can, I 'launch' at 3500 rpm and have guestimated 0-60 times between 5 and 6 seconds. (i drive home late at night and end up getting all the red lights on teh country roads that are 55mph. When the light turns green I'm in first with the clutch in, I start to rev upI press CD TRACK DOWN and the track counter starts and I take off...reaching 60mph I can then look down to see 00:05 then 00:06 on the cd player...and that's fast enough for me because i know its not good to launch at 6000 rpm like the test driver did to get the 5.5sec time for the spec sheet ....With my constant 3500 rpm launches, i'm guessing subaru would see more wear than normal on the clutch, but i'm not sure.....

[Miguel_04_WRX]

I had the 4th gear grind happen to me a few times when driving very civil and calm but from what I could tell upon lots of evaluation of the situation is that 1) 3rd to 4th FEELS like the shortest shift distance out of all the gear to gear travels...(i do have the oem short throw shifter installed) 2) because it is so short and I was driving kinda lazy, i would end up pulling out of 3rd with the clutch less than half way down and timing wouldn't let me get the clutch all the way down to the floor by the time the gear was ready to go in to 4th then it would grind a few teeth and I'd let it go to neutral and then shift smooth. Scared to tell service about it because I only have 9,500 miles. So i'm guessing this was my problem)
Never took off faster than 4000 rpm from stop, but when I can, I 'launch' at 3500 rpm and have guestimated 0-60 times between 5 and 6 seconds. (i drive home late at night and end up getting all the red lights on teh country roads that are 55mph. When the light turns green I'm in first with the clutch in, I start to rev upI press CD TRACK DOWN and the track counter starts and I take off...reaching 60mph I can then look down to see 00:05 then 00:06 on the cd player...and that's fast enough for me because i know its not good to launch at 6000 rpm like the test driver did to get the 5.5sec time for the spec sheet ....With my constant 3500 rpm launches, i'm guessing subaru would see more wear than normal on the clutch, but i'm not sure.....

They blamed it on me, and would not replace the syncro under warranty. They also told me i needed 3 and 4th nnew gears I dont care. i parted the car out sold everything and got an EVO VIII

[NewShockerGuy]

Can someone explain what gear grind is? Sometimes it's hard for my to go into 2nd gear in my sti... but I have never heard a grinding noise when switching into gears... Now when I had my wrx and I had to put it in to reverse sometimes I would hear a grinding or what I can explain a buz saw for maybe 2-4 seconds then I would push the clutch in and try to get it into reverse... is that what grinding is?

Thanks,
-Nigel

[BLaKWrX]

yup, it grinds into reverse in the wrx since reverse has no syncro

[NewShockerGuy]

So your saying that grind I use to hear in my WRX when I would put it into reverse is something that I would definatlly know if it happened in my STI...

Knock on wood.. I've never heard that grind in my sti and it's been 6000 miles so far...

Cool, thanks for the insight :-)

-Nigel

[Vitreous]

FYI...

There hasn't been any (many?) posts on this thread saying they HAVEN'T experienced grinding in gears 1-5...

Just to add another data point for everyone, I have an '04 WRX with 37,300 miles. No grinding so far unless I make a dumb mistake w/the clutch or am shifting into reverse, and I do drive "spiritedly" often. Dealer-tranny fluid, not sure what they use (Pitre Subaru).

[BLaKWrX]

Yeah ur lucky, only the 02-03 wrx experienced the grinding problems, but surley subaru put a different gear set in the 04+ models.

[Thew]

I've read the whole thread and would like to put my experiences in. I have an 02wrx wagon with, upipe, downpipe, cat delete, cai, ecutech, bov, fuel pump, etc. I experienced no trans problems until i changed the trans oil to mobil 1 synthetic. The problem i noticed was grinding going into first, and under hard shifts between 3 and 4th. I have been a mechanic for several gears and have seen numerous motorcycle(wet clutches) slip due to the use of synthetic oil. This proves to be a problem for synchros as well as they function on a similar premis as a clutch. I drained out the synthetic and replaced it with valvoline 80-90 mineral based, and I have only experienced grinding one time since. We will see after a few miles if it vanishes completely. I also found that 3 other wrx owners i know all switched to mobil 1 synthetic approximately 1 month before their transes grenaded....it's enough evidence for me. Synthetic just does work for synchronized transmissions