[Rex Bradley]

I've got a 2001 manual with about 30,000 miles on it now and for a while it has made a pop when shifting between 1st and 2nd. It feels like the shifter is catching on something and the breaking free. I don't have problems in any other gears and it appears to be less noticeable when the car is warm. Is this something really bad? Thanks for any feedback.

 

[trunkout]

weird

I have had that since day one (16k for me)....never really thought much about it.....honda never said they found a prob.....

my moto: if it works, move on. it's a honda.....

 

[Rex Bradley]

That's a relief to hear. This is my first experience with a manual transmission and I bought it used so the popping had really been bothering me. I thought I was doing something wrong that had hurt the transmission.

 

[Dougie]

You want to not shift out of first when it is under any load at all. They undercut the dogs on the gears to keep it from popping out of gear, and on this lightweight transmission the effect is more noticeable than on a regular car. Push down clutch all the way, then shift.

 

[Guillermo]

Like Dougie said, get the help of several friends or co-workers until find someone that knows how to teach to shift better. Most manual drivers think they know who to shift properly but in reality most have lots of room for improvement (no matter how many decades of experience they may have).

Hope this helps:
http://www.turnfast.com/tech_driving/driving_shifting.shtml

 

[Rex Bradley]

Thank you for the link. I'll make sure the clutch is all the way down, although I thought I was being good about that, perhaps my floormats are robbing me of the last bit of travel. On a similar note on a few occasions I have tried to shift into 1st with the clutch to the floor and the car would come out of autostop but would not be in gear. It would take a couple of times trying to shift between 1st and neutral to get it past this stoping point and into gear. Is this a related problem involving clutch position?

 

[Guillermo]

perhaps my floormats are robbing me of the last bit of travel.

If you are using more then 1 floormat in the drivers side there is going to be a problem trying to get full clutch disengagement.
From a stop, if it doesn't go into 1st gear easily, shift into second and then into 1st. This will align the gears better. This applies to trying to shift into reverse, if difficult shift into 2nd then try reverse again.

 

[Rex Bradley]

I shouldn't have pluralized that I'm just using one floormat although I have some acoustic foam lining the floorboard. Seems to work fine as long as the clutch depresses just the carpet and not the floormat on top of it. Could be just a issue of the floormat dispersing the force and not depressing the foam. I'll take up the carpet again and make some adjustments to the foam. Thank for the lining up the gears tip I'll give that a shot next time I run into the problem. Thanks again for your help.

 

[Rex Bradley]

Hmmm...I take that back with the clutch fully depressed it popped everytime I came out of 1st on the way home.

 

[Dougie]

There are only two switches on the transmission, one detecting that it's in reverse (for the reverse light) and one detecting that it's in neutral (for the autostop). You can probably move it far enough out of neutral into first to make the neutral switch open so that the autostop thinks you're ready to go, but then not be able to engage it because the dogs aren't lined up. Normally you would just sort of subconsciously relax the gear lever and try again and it would be fine, but now that you have all these extra features to think about you might be noticing it more.

I have the "problem" with the first gear "catching" problem, too, and it's always because I get too agressive and try to pull it out of first before the clutch is all the way disengaged. You might want to check the free play adjustment of the pedal...