Is the Transmission the Weak point for the Speed3?
- Thread starter jaydubz
- Start date
I had the same problem at first.... so when the car is warming up, I hold the clutch in and clear every gear several times 1-2-3-4-5-6 clutch out, clutch in, 1-2-3-4-5-6 then clutch out and let it finish warming up
I do a lot of city driving, so I almost never hit 6th and it seems like just running through the gears a couple times help to get rid of the resistance. (Plus, I can make engine noises and pretend I'm racing while doing it and no one's the wiser
)Thats what I have heard. I will swapping my tranny fluid on Saturday. And I will be ordering a rear motor mount and some busihngs as well.
Mazda factory fills these manuals with a pretty cheap factory fill oil IMHO. I'd venture a guess that is a conventional oil 75w/90 with a very low viscosity index.
Low viscosity index means that there is a great deal of viscosity (thickness) change from when it is cold to when it is fully warmed up. When fully warmed up the oil is thinner and shifting is easier with no gear grinding.
Replacing your trans oil with a synthetic product that has a high viscosity index will result in a transmission that will enable great shifting from the moment you fire the car off. My BMW had the notchiest shifting transmission I had ever used until I switched it over to Redline MTL.
Within 20 feet of the change, the transmisson shifted 1000 times better. That car now has 100k on it and it shifts better than the day I picked it up, new.
I just received the Redline MT 90 in the mail recently and next week plan to change out the fluid in my speed3. Just like everyone else here who has changed to it, the car will shift way better.
Low viscosity index means that there is a great deal of viscosity (thickness) change from when it is cold to when it is fully warmed up. When fully warmed up the oil is thinner and shifting is easier with no gear grinding.
Replacing your trans oil with a synthetic product that has a high viscosity index will result in a transmission that will enable great shifting from the moment you fire the car off. My BMW had the notchiest shifting transmission I had ever used until I switched it over to Redline MTL.
Within 20 feet of the change, the transmisson shifted 1000 times better. That car now has 100k on it and it shifts better than the day I picked it up, new.
I just received the Redline MT 90 in the mail recently and next week plan to change out the fluid in my speed3. Just like everyone else here who has changed to it, the car will shift way better.
There are many here who testify to the fact that changing the trans oil to Redline MT 90 has helped shifting a lot.
Redline products have a high viscosity index meaning they have very little viscosity change from cold to hot. MT 90 is a very stable oil.
I have used Redline trans oil products for years in my BMW and it shifts as good as, if not better than, new.
Years ago it was an accepted maintenance practice to flush manual trans oil on new cars at 1200 miles to get rid of breakin metal. Thats exactly what I plan to do tomorrow ( car has 3900 miles). Cheers!
Redline products have a high viscosity index meaning they have very little viscosity change from cold to hot. MT 90 is a very stable oil.
I have used Redline trans oil products for years in my BMW and it shifts as good as, if not better than, new.
Years ago it was an accepted maintenance practice to flush manual trans oil on new cars at 1200 miles to get rid of breakin metal. Thats exactly what I plan to do tomorrow ( car has 3900 miles). Cheers!
Blue Buzzard
Member
Shifting the 08 Speed3
I live in the Northeast. Imagine my surprise shifting my NEW Speed3 on that first cold morning. Like moving a cold knife through cold butter. Smooth, really smooth. Like a frozen shift cable attached to a shift fork trying to move synchronizers and gears around in a gearbox filled with STP.
Double clutch? Ho Ho that don't work. Count to three during the 1-2 shift, don't work either. Humm let me see... I live on a hill, maybe starting off in 2nd or 3rd will work. No way. Lets try sitting in the driveway with the motor churning away until the temp gauge is in the middle. Nope the trans-axle must be warm and toasty before some semblance of normal shifting is possible.
I can tell you how many teeth are on each transmission gear by the pitch of the grind. This car has 1500 miles on it, it'll get better when the weather gets warmer. Move to California? Just drive it for 30 minutes and it's a little smoother not as good as it could be. Good design the culprit? Every gear change is different, always some difference, never a perfect gear change.
Why should I have to change the gear oil or whatever oil is in the trans-axle with oil it should have been delivered with? Synthetic oil is a possibility, it certainly works well in a motocross bike but that is a dog shifted transmission that doesn't have a ring and pinion that requires an EP lubricant.
Can't wait to start pounding on it, maybe thats what it needs.
I live in the Northeast. Imagine my surprise shifting my NEW Speed3 on that first cold morning. Like moving a cold knife through cold butter. Smooth, really smooth. Like a frozen shift cable attached to a shift fork trying to move synchronizers and gears around in a gearbox filled with STP.
Double clutch? Ho Ho that don't work. Count to three during the 1-2 shift, don't work either. Humm let me see... I live on a hill, maybe starting off in 2nd or 3rd will work. No way. Lets try sitting in the driveway with the motor churning away until the temp gauge is in the middle. Nope the trans-axle must be warm and toasty before some semblance of normal shifting is possible.
I can tell you how many teeth are on each transmission gear by the pitch of the grind. This car has 1500 miles on it, it'll get better when the weather gets warmer. Move to California? Just drive it for 30 minutes and it's a little smoother not as good as it could be. Good design the culprit? Every gear change is different, always some difference, never a perfect gear change.
Why should I have to change the gear oil or whatever oil is in the trans-axle with oil it should have been delivered with? Synthetic oil is a possibility, it certainly works well in a motocross bike but that is a dog shifted transmission that doesn't have a ring and pinion that requires an EP lubricant.
Can't wait to start pounding on it, maybe thats what it needs.
Powerslave
Banned
- :
- mps 3
I have heard my clutch squeek here and there a little other than that no problems tranny is tough!, also so i heard that vw are notoruis for having squeeks and rattles everywhere
Even here in Tampa I find morning gear changes to be notchy. Ten minutes later and it's as good as it's going to be. I still have the stock fluids in everywhere though.
Yeah, my old GTI squeaked and rattled like an old pirate ship. I was back in DC recently and drove it around for a few days. Holy-crap. I was soooo happy to get back to my MS3. To think I used to be fully and completed in love with that car...
Yeah, my old GTI squeaked and rattled like an old pirate ship. I was back in DC recently and drove it around for a few days. Holy-crap. I was soooo happy to get back to my MS3. To think I used to be fully and completed in love with that car...
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you defenitely need to take apart your tranny to appriciate how advanced it is. the ring gear is bolted to the diff with 16 fasteners! it is about 2" thick and about 10" in diameter. the trans has three main shafts and the shift forks are friggin HUGE. actually everything in the MS3 tranny is MASSIVE. i had a 3 sport model manual trans next to another MS3 trans and it simply dwarfed the sport version. simply an awesome trans. i heard it is capable of over 500 hp.
16000+ of spirited driving, 50% of the time, numerous clutch drops, third gear wheelspin, smoke coming off the rotors, flat shifting , kick shifting, second gear launches at the track, long smokey burnouts ,missing third when i first got her and mms, and generally beating the hell out of it. Hello Mazda forum spies!!!! even smoked up clutch on like the third day. It came back around a rebedded just fine. This car rocks! No i have had nothing but a good experience with the drivetrain excepting tires. Love you Mazda!
LOL, that was hilarious! You do know that the forum spy is two spots above your post! Good old Speedtec works at Open Road Mazda in East Brunswick NJ. Careful he may go and tattle! (five-0)
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I was reading and it seams like we all have the same problem with ous ms3, in the morning, when the car is no warmed up, the shifting of the gears is sometimes hard to do, or it seams like the gears don't go in easilly, ( grinding sound) and i'm talking about the first and second gear, anyways, i've had that problem since i started to push my car (after 5000 km), like drag starts, when i tried to shift the gear fast from 1st to 2 nd they were not going in sometimes, and i had to retry to put it in second, and it did the same from 2 to 3 .It does not happened often, but only when you shift really fast, and from then i had the problems of grinding on mornings. When the car is wormed up, after 5-10 minutes it does not happen to me. So i told the dealer from were i baught my car and they garante the repair. They told me that since the gears are syncro if you misshift it automatically ****'s the syncro, and that is because the tranny from mazda is not adapted to our ms3. It's warante all right, they then changed my syncro 1-2-3 gears. And now no problems. Before they did that they changed the tranny oil, and that helped alot, but it still happened that grinding sound in cold starts. From what i see everyone is saying that short shifter and bushing takes that problem away, plus that new tranny oil, but i wanted to let you know that changing the syncro is warante for the firts 5 years of your car, so mazda will fix that problem under no fees, but you may lose your car for a weak. Sure i could have keept my car and it wasn't that bad, after all you get used to it, but anyway mazda know that it is a problem, they will changed for you up to 3 times before they start saying something. So maybe i'm not the only one that had that problem after all.
