3rd Gear Grind

[Icey1174]

My 17 year-old son has been driving the 944. While he is not a perfect stick shift driver he is decent. Today he told me the car grinds a little when going into 3rd gear.

I recently replaced the master and slave cylinders for the clutch about two months ago and have had no problems at all. The clutch itself is about 5 years old and has been problem free.

I drove the car all day yesterday. He drove it some last night and about 10 miles today. I took it for a ride today and everything shifts great but 3rd gear. It grinds some when going into 3rd almost like the clutch is not fully engaged. It does go into 3rd with a little push.

Any ideas on the problem? It does smell like something, maybe the clutch, was burning. I would suspect a problem in 1st or 2nd gear if it is a clutch problem, not 3rd. 1st and 2nd shift great with no jerking at all.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Icey1174]

I checked Clark's and all it really talks about is the rubber disk clutch, which the new one is not, and measuring the clutch disk for wear.

I measured the clutch disk and the gap measures to be 26mm. Clark's says a new disk should measure 18mm and that you should replace at 34mm. I am dead in the middle of those numbers so I think I may be safe there.

Could it be some minor burning of the clutch that will be ok once it full cools down? I took it for another quick ride down the road, about a 1/4 of a mile. I tried just skipping thrid and going to fourth. That seems to work ok.

Any ideas???

[zedsn]

Sounds like your 3rd gear syncro is starting to go bad. You might want to change out your transaxle gear oil if you haven't already done so. I don't know if a synthetic gear oil would be better than a mineral oil for this problem. Synthetic is slippery and might help the problem or might make it worse. You might want to do some research on the matter.

[Icey1174]

Reverse used to have this problem. It almost seems like the problem has moved from reverse to third. I changed the gear oil about two years ago. Any recommendations? Purple Magic?

[Gawernator]

Redline MT-90 75-90W GL-4