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Originally Posted by MikeK
I had an 04 WRX for a year and a half, and I can honestly say the tranny was the thing I hated most about that car. (The brakes were a very close second). Nothing ever actually broke on my tranny, it just sucked hairy balls the whole time I had it (and not in a good way).
It was almost impossible to get that thing into first or reverse, especially in cold weather. Sometimes to back out of the garage, I would have to move the car forward an inch before it would go into reverse. Of course, it wouldn't go into first either, so I had to use second to move the car forward, then reverse to get out of the garage, then MAYBE I could get it into first to drive off. Also, I cannot count the number of times I had to start from second at a traffic light because I couldn't get the fucking POS into first.
I hated that goddamed piece of shit tranny, good riddance to it. The STi tranny is about 18,000! times better. I cannot believe both trannies were made by the same company.
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For those of you with problems getting into reverse here's the deal:
If you try to go into reverse, and it won't go, simply leave the car in neutral, step off the clutch for a second, put the clutch back in, and try reverse again. The car won't engage reverse because the dog-teeth in the shift collar aren't lined up with their slots in the gear. By stepping off the clutch, you spin the input shaft and turn the gear. The next time you try to engage reverse, there's a very good chance everything will be lined up close enough to work. Just don't clutch in and try to shift too quickly or the lay shaft will still be spinning and it will grind a little as you engage reverse, since there are no synchros on reverse.
The same trick works for 1st gear as well, but shouldn't be necessary as often because of the synchros.
There's a great article that details the inner workings of manual transmissions on howstuffworks.com:
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/transmission.htm
Understanding the details is a good way to help you diagnose transmission quirks, and will also help you to understand how to shift the car smoothly and baby those "weak" transmissions.
