driving manual questions
 

1. This morning as I was slowly leaving my house, I heard this grinding noise. I think maybe it's because it was cold and and so it was more difficult to shift all the way through the gate into 1st. Does this damage anything if I accidentally do this?

2. Is it bad when you're in the wrong gear and your car starts to shake because you were going too slow for that gear?

3. If I'm on the freeway going 65 in 6th gear, is it possible to accidentally knock the shifter into neutral? Or is there some type of mechanism that'll stop that from happening?

1. Grinding gears accidentally for a moment won't harm anything.
2. This is normally called "lugging" the motor...in theroy you are putting more load on the enigne...but for moment here or there it's okay.
3. It's not easy to accidentally knock a gear into neutral...esp out of 6..if you did it's not a big deal, just shift back into gear.

1. Undesireable, but unavoidable. The gears may not have been fully meshed, it happens.
2. @mankarn86 got it, this is called lugging. I've always heard it increases knock which can cause damage in the long term, but in a modern engine with knock sensors it's probably harmless. You'll get the hang of it.
3. Speaking from other MT's I've driven, this will never happen unless you are pushing on the gear shifter while giving it a tiny amount of throttle. Any situation where you are giving it -just- the right amount of gas so that if the engine was disconnected from the transmission it would be losing rpms at the same rate as the transmission is from drag & friction, it will pop out with just a flick of the wrist. If you do this by accident, just clutch in and put it back in gear.

I suggest doing this on purpose once just to learn what to expect. Get your car up to speed, lightly press towards neutral, and slowly let up on the throttle.

1. Grinding your transmission gear is a small but permanent shaving from the teeth of the gear that wears down the gears over time. Hence the word grinding. Over the course of the life of the car, there will be wear but grinding gears will most definitely accelerate the wear on your transmission.

2. At too low of an rpm when you engage into gear you are loading the engine without an optimal amount of air/fuel mixture to keep the engine going. Eventually when the engine reaches an RPM too low, it will sputter and turn off. You'll notice that sometimes there's a slight pinging sound when you're bogging down the engine. It's a sound you do not want to be hearing to say the least.

3. You can most definitely pull the shift lever out into neutral without engaging the clutch. On some older toyotas like the AW11 MR2, the lever can pop out spontaneously. This is most likely due to wear and age of the car. There is no mechanism to lock it into a gear. I would think this is for safety. It's like how an automatic, you don't have to push the unlock button to shift from drive to neutral.

1. I'm not sure if I was grinding the gear. I thought you can only grind the gears if say you were going in reverse and you quickly switch to first gear? In my situation, is it considered grinding the gear if the stick shift is only halfway through the gate? It just sounded like a grinding noise, but not sure how that compares to the example I gave above.

Think of your 10,12 or 15 speed bicycle and having it on the large front sprocket and the small rear sprocket. Now on level ground start riding your bicycle. That's lugging. You will notice a rapid improvement when you drop down to a smaller front sprocket. Same thing with your car when you down shift.

You can grind whenever you are engaging a gear. If you heard grinding while shifting, you are grinding gears.

Here's an example: Skip to 1:10
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Pt_qIw984Q"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Pt_qIw984Q[/ame]

If you can feel that it's not going through the gate smothly and has a few notchy clicks along with the sound, it means that the gears were ground a bit while you shifted in. People seem to confuse clutch chatter and gear grinding very often. If you're feeling a notchiness in your shifting, it's the gears that aren't meshing correctly.

Insert "Grinds your gears" joke here.


:)

How do you fix the gears if they aren't meshing correctly? So, if you only shift partway on accident due to notchiness, does this cause the gears to grind? Because it does sound like a clicking/grinding noise when it happens. It's not very loud though.

what if you don't hear the gear grind like that, but you feel the gears grinding or crunching when shifting, with the clutch pressed down all the way? sometimes i feel like it's not as smooth as other times, though i've never heard my car do that before.

secondly, sometimes i'm unable to shift into 2nd from 1st, and i can only go straight into 3, i think 2nd gear is probably the only gear i have weird issues with, sometimes i can't shift into it properly...

In response to #1, were you at a complete stop when trying to shift into 1st?

If you were moving while downshifting into first that may be the reason it made the noise.

When the transmission is still cold, as the engine would be as well, shifting is more difficult since it has not yet had a chance to warm up and be lubricated. This condition may or may not be your problem.

In response to the near above advice, he may not have a BRZ. But one can shift into first gear when moving but it is easier at very low speed. For instance, when backing out of a driveway then shifting to first gear from the reverse. In this case though,, I tend to shift from reverse to second, and THEN to first to go forward.

Others in this forum may confirm my thoughts.

Yeah, I think I heard the grinding noise as I was going from 2nd to 1st since I was coming to a stop sign.