I have a 2004 Jeep Liberty, manual transmission.
About 10% of the time, when I want to put it into reverse, it doesn’t want to go until I rock the car somehow, either by letting it coast a couple of inches, or by putting it into first and moving a couple of inches.
It’s always done this, but it seems to be getting worse.
When I mentioned it to my husband, he essentially said that I don’t know how to drive and therefore am having this problem.
Is he right?
I’d bet that a synchro gear is out of step somehow. When you tilt the car, it aligns the teeth “just right,” and allows you to shift.
While I’d never believe your husband’s theory, it’s always possible that user error (obviously not in this case though :D) could have contributed to the issue.
I am not a mechanic, nor especially versed in the ways of transmissions.
I had a Nissan that was like this. It would refuse to go into reverse, but if I feathered the clutch a bit I could sort of grind it into reverse (which is bad). Took me a while, but I eventually figured out that when it wouldn’t do reverse I gould shift into first, and then into reverse with no problem. Try it. If it works, don’t tell your guy. That way when he as a problem with it down the road you can innocently say, “Hm…doesn’t seem to be a problem for me.”
[QUOTE=butler1850]
I’d bet that a synchro gear is out of step somehow. When you tilt the car, it aligns the teeth “just right,” and allows you to shift.]
As a car buff and someone who has rebuilt several on his own - while not a proffessional - I think that this is exactly right. It actually happens on one of my cars, maybe 10% of the time. I wouldn’t worry about it, I’ve never known this type of ‘problem’ to get better or worse. It is kind of just there. What I have found is when it is inconvenient to move the vehicle just try ever so slightly to “force” (slightly!) it into reverse while letting up on the clutch just a little bit (as in just before you would expect it to engage.
I think this gets that synchro-mesh up to speed and it has always let me go right into gear.
Hope this helps!
Thanks for the answers, everyone. I’ll admit, if he hadn’t gotten so snotty, I wouldn’t have gotten annoyed enough to ask the question here, so ignorance has been fought with snot.
Two other possibilities:
If your clutch is not fully disengaged, it can be hard to put the transmission into gear. Perhaps your clutch linkage is out of adjustment.
I once ill-advisedly changed the transmission oil in my old Duster from one type (ATF) to another (80-weight gear oil). It became quite difficult to shift. Had to drain it and refill it with ATF again. Do you have the correct type of oil in the transmission?
I’m not an expert either, but I thought that reverse gear does not have synchromesh?
Anyway, it sometimes happens to me too - I find that simply pressing and releasing the clutch in neutral fixes it.
Correct no syncros on reverse. The trick is to put it into first then into reverse. I have owned many manual trans cars and trucks like this. It is not a bug, but a feature.
Perhaps your idle is set a little high. If it is, you will have to double clutch to get it in gear.
If it goes quite easily into 1st with the engine running, it’s not a clutch release problem.
The shift linkage has a reverse lockout that prevents one from shifting out of 5th and straight into reverse. Simply shifting into neutral and letting the lever move sideways away from reverse should deactivate this.
There is no synchromesh for reverse. Occasionally, the teeth on the gears that need to slide together to get reverse are lined up so that they butt against each other rather than slide by each other. The thing to do is shift into neutral and let the clutch pedal out for an instant (then press the clutch in and try to shift). This will cause some of the gears to rotate a bit and almost always allow the shift. Very occasionally, it might be necessary to do this twice. It’s not necessary to shift into 1st (which has the same effect, but with slight additional wear on 1st gear components).
The part in bold above should be taught to all drivers, but too often is not.
No you won’t. You might have to wait a bit longer for a shaft to stop spinning, but high idle per se in no way requires double clutching.
I had a '90 or '91 GMC Truck when I was a teenager that wouldn’t go into reverse without going into a forward gear first. I knew a couple of people who had GMCs or Chevys and they all had that same problem. I just learned to go into 5th and then down into reverse (it didn’t have the safety feature of not allowing you to go straight down into reverse from 5th). It became an automatic action for me.
My '94 Saturn SL did the same thing except it had the safety feature, so I’d go 3rd then reverse.
If I held the clutch for 15 seconds or so, it’d synchronize and go right into reverse, but that usually wasn’t an option, such as when trying to turn around or back into a parking space, so it was always a forward gear first.
A '72 Ford pickup I had with 3 speed on the column had to be shifted into 1st before reverse. That was the only way to get it into reverse, no matter how long you held the clutch.
Later, I had two different Mustangs ('98 and '01) with the Borg-Warner 5-speed and you could clutch and go straight into reverse with no problems.
I think it depends on the type of transmission.
You can almost say that a synchromesh transmission is, to a non-synchromesh transmisson, what an automatic transmission is to a manual transmission.\
Here’s an article that describes a synchromesh tranmission:
The others are right, the reverse gear is not synchromesh so sometimes you have to “grind” it in. It does cause wear and tear on the reverse gear. Still, it’s much better than the old transmissions where you would sometimes have to grind it in to go from first to second to third. It kept a lot of transmission rebuilders in work. The higher the RPM’s the less the grinding.
Not much to add except there are some manual transmission cars that have a syncro reverse.
I am about 99.9% sure the Jeep in question is not one of them, but they do exist.