Gear box 4th to 3rd

ameriscot · 10-30-2007, 10:58 PM

Hello all

I just got the 06, GTO last week, 17,000 miles manual shift and so far not so good.

I've driven many manual vehicles (Z06 being the last) but the GTO seems to have a "loose" gear box.

Sometimes going 1st into 2nd it will take a bit of a forceful push. I'm not close to the red line and well above the 1-4 threshold.
Sometimes it will "slip" out of 2nd if I'm creeping along in traffic (Houston)
Sometimes I just cannot shift down into 3rd from 4th when ready to overtake or using the engine to slow down. It's like the gear is not there and I have to slip back into 4th and slip back behind the car I was about to pass (nightmare)

I'm not a eduacated mechanic but the dealer tells me they can find nothing wrong. I plan to take the service manager out for a spin tomorrow.

All advice greatly appreciated.

GTO JUDGE · 10-31-2007, 12:52 PM

Welcome to the Forum

Sorry to hear you are having difficulties.

Not a mechanic but it sounds like it could be synchronizers. Maybe the previous owner was not so caring about the car and you got his problems. When you take the car back to take the service manager out for a spin to check it out ask to see (by the VIN) if there were any warranty problems with the car.

Good Luck.

ameriscot · 10-31-2007, 08:32 PM

Thanks for the advice. The Service Manager and a Mechanic apparently could find nothing wrong again.

However, I take out the Service Manager, get on a quiet stretch and start "playing" , shift down from 4th to 3rd and low and behold, I barely manage to get it into gear each time. I even managed to get it to jump out of 2nd on a slow circle around an empty parking lot. These people must think I'm a retard !

Needless to say the Service Manager was not so cocky. Left the car at the shop (he mentioned synchronizers) and I'll also check as per your advice tomorrow.

Other that this, I love the car and look forward to clearing this issue up.

Thanks again.

GOATTEE · 11-01-2007, 10:33 AM

I have a 06 M/T and have never seen any of this. When it is working good this is an awesome gearbox. I just do not like that 1-4 shift light. That makes no sense to me. I just make sure I am over 21 mph when I shift to
2nd gear so the light goes out.

ameriscot · 11-02-2007, 05:40 PM

Well I STILL have the problem. Seems like the dealer fixed nothing so I'll be taking it back monday !

Seems that it starts crunching while shifting down to 3rd at about 50mph and then gets progressively worse the higher the speed I shift down from. If I remember rightly I'm around 2.5K rpm at 50mph and 3K ish at 60mph.

I hope this is not to be an ongoing saga..........I hate ongoing sagas !

Wing_Nut · 11-02-2007, 10:41 PM

The T56 is not a slick shifting marvel of refined engineering. My 05 was horrible on the 4-3 downshift. If you slowed down the lever action it would usually be OK. In a fast downshift, it would usually refuse to engage. It seemed like the synchros were just unable to keep up with rapid shifts.

Going up through the gears from 3-4, this never occurred. More evidence against the synchros.

Can't tell you how many times I swore at the damned thing. It sucks when you try and grab third for acceleration on the highway and you end up trying to beat the damn thing into gear for 2-3 seconds. Or, you're headed into a high speed corner and you try to downshift and rev match only to find yourself still between gears on exit.

I just resigned myself to the fact that the GTO is a grand tourer, not a sports car. It's better off cruising highways at high speed than trying to tackle rapid changes in gears or direction. As a high speed cruiser it was great. The weight and balky transmission don't matter as much as the torque and nice ride.