Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

Hey guys, i know your going to say the gearbox syncros need doing but hear me out.

my 4th gear grinds SOMETIMES when shifting into 4th, maybe 1/5 times it does it on average, so it makes me think that its something else other than the syncro, because if it was the syncro wouldnt it grind every time? this is at any speed, weather i shift at 5k or 2.5k its still the same story, every now and then it grinds, i havnt experimented fully with this but i think it might do it less when its cold? not 100% though.

what do you guys reckon? i went to a mech and he said i could thin the oil down a bit (im using motul gear 300, 75 90 or 80 90 or something) any ideas? i really dont want to have to get a reco if i dont need to.

cheers

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/327567-what-swrong-with-my-gearbox/
Share on other sites

4th gear synchro always dies first.... try redline shockproof or just let it grind and forget about it :D

it had redline in it, and i dumped it and used motul, no difference realy.

the only reason i dont want to let it grind is because what if i get a reco someday? do they reco the gears aswell ? or just the syncros?

gears or synchros, they get replaced, not repaired. and neither are cheap. synchros almost always go first. gears should only go if you drive around with bad synchros and grind them all the time but rb25 gears are pretty tough. i have the same box and mine had been grinding for a while although i got used to it and avoided the grinding and when i rebuilt it the teeth on the gears were still in perfect condition

my observations remains valid and yet to be unconfirmed, it might not be the syncros, as it dosent grind everytime at any rpm, it dosent grind more than it does, its a sometimes thing even at higher rpm, so what else could it be? would thinning the oil down a bit help it?

my observations remains valid and yet to be unconfirmed, it might not be the syncros, as it dosent grind everytime at any rpm, it dosent grind more than it does, its a sometimes thing even at higher rpm, so what else could it be? would thinning the oil down a bit help it?

Again, I am sometimes getting this in 3rd/4th gear when shifting up at lower revs and I belive it is diff/driveshaft/gearbox related as the changing of gear operation has an effect all the way to the diff before engaing the wheels through the axle shafts, so somewhere in the whole operation it is being hesitant and causing the grind as the gear is not properly engaging in time. I am no expert but this is how I see it all working together.

I am going to have a talk with a drivetrain specialist here in Brisbane and see if it is possible to re-tune the whole drivetrain operation. I replaced my diff becuase it was so clunky, whinney and chattery and felt really loose in it's operation, but I am feeling the same type issues with a CUSCO 1.5 installed, so something along the train is causing a problem which affects all the components when working together. There could be to much play at the diff housing connection to the shaft also?

I belive I have a back-lash problem as the driveline operation is too clunky and you feel the diff kind of jolt if you are not driving nice at low rev range, if I was to drive my car like a new toyota corolla, I believe the diff would blow, it can be that bad sometimes, makes driving hard as you have to put a lot of effort into making it run smooth, probably gona burn my clutch out soon also with riding it to compensate the driveline faults ; )

You had the best oil in the gbox, if it still happens with new fluid it is not fluid related. If your synchros were gone it would be very stubborn to engage the gear at any rev and it would crunch, but it is grinding, it sounds like it just about engaged but hesitated.

This is my 2 cents worth from experience.

I drove a 98 r34 coupe with 130,000 genuine km's on the clock had service history from Japan, the driveline felt like shit, the diff was awful much like mine before I changed, the whole setup was loose and felt horrid to drive, very clunky. I believe the components in these cars work very hard and need replacing at certain km usage, much like suspension. The cradle can also be at fault with these cars causing major dramas at the back-end and tramping which in effect goes all the way through the driveline. You do get used to driving these cars with a lot of foot work but they are never smooth. 4WD is a different kettle of fish altogether.

Again, I am sometimes getting this in 3rd/4th gear when shifting up at lower revs and I belive it is diff/driveshaft/gearbox related as the changing of gear operation has an effect all the way to the diff before engaing the wheels through the axle shafts, so somewhere in the whole operation it is being hesitant and causing the grind as the gear is not properly engaging in time. I am no expert but this is how I see it all working together.

I am going to have a talk with a drivetrain specialist here in Brisbane and see if it is possible to re-tune the whole drivetrain operation. I replaced my diff becuase it was so clunky, whinney and chattery and felt really loose in it's operation, but I am feeling the same type issues with a CUSCO 1.5 installed, so something along the train is causing a problem which affects all the components when working together. There could be to much play at the diff housing connection to the shaft also?

I belive I have a back-lash problem as the driveline operation is too clunky and you feel the diff kind of jolt if you are not driving nice at low rev range, if I was to drive my car like a new toyota corolla, I believe the diff would blow, it can be that bad sometimes, makes driving hard as you have to put a lot of effort into making it run smooth, probably gona burn my clutch out soon also with riding it to compensate the driveline faults ; )

You had the best oil in the gbox, if it still happens with new fluid it is not fluid related. If your synchros were gone it would be very stubborn to engage the gear at any rev and it would crunch, but it is grinding, it sounds like it just about engaged but hesitated.

This is my 2 cents worth from experience.

I drove a 98 r34 coupe with 130,000 genuine km's on the clock had service history from Japan, the driveline felt like shit, the diff was awful much like mine before I changed, the whole setup was loose and felt horrid to drive, very clunky. I believe the components in these cars work very hard and need replacing at certain km usage, much like suspension. The cradle can also be at fault with these cars causing major dramas at the back-end and tramping which in effect goes all the way through the driveline. You do get used to driving these cars with a lot of foot work but they are never smooth. 4WD is a different kettle of fish altogether.

good points, we did drop the rear 2 cradle nuts to get to the back diff bolts, (the cradle being the whole main frame holidng everything) and ever since we changed the diff im getting a bit of a clunk over bumps in the rear, its either the diff or drive shaft or SOMETHING, so maybe it needs to be tweaked by a mechanic

good points, we did drop the rear 2 cradle nuts to get to the back diff bolts, (the cradle being the whole main frame holidng everything) and ever since we changed the diff im getting a bit of a clunk over bumps in the rear, its either the diff or drive shaft or SOMETHING, so maybe it needs to be tweaked by a mechanic

Ever thought of re-newing all cradle bushes and diff bushes?

You will need to get insert sleeves manufactured for the rear diff bushes as they are a 1 piece unit and are not sold as a replacement OEM part, but you can purchase the bushing at a pretty good price, I paid $150 for a diff mounting set, that's 4 x bushes and 2 inserts for the fronts.

I had my front bushes replaced 2 weeks ago when the CUSCO went in, but my problem still exists and was there before that, could be the rear bushes but they still looked pretty good and were refitted? Would have been nice to renew them and have seen if the problem was still there.

I would like to renew my cradle, or even purchase a new one and have new bushes in there with alloy inserts, I hear it makes such a difference to renew that whole back end set-up as over time the bushes wear out and cause all sorts of issues. Expensive I know but if you are to keep the car for a long time would be worth it in the end.

Almost every bush under my R34 GTT has been renewed and so have the tie-rod ends etc, my car is smooth suspension wise and feels like new appart from the clunky diff and driveline problem ; (

Once this problem has been resolved my car will honestly drive like new, can't wait till that day happens!

when you put the cusco centre in lowbro did you have the whole unit reconditioned or just chuck the centre in with old bearings?

Bearings supplied with the unit were installed, I bought it second hand, so not sure how good those bearings were, but only about 5000km of usage.

If the bearings were pressed correctly the unit should be running correctly, it is only at the low rev range turning etc where the diff is really uncomfortable to drive and thumps and feels like it is going to lockup or blow. 3 point turns I try to really avoid.

Have you had similair experiences with LSD, seen as we are hijacking his thread Lol!

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • Wow, thanks for your help guys 🙏. I really appreciate it. Thanks @Rezz, if i fail finding any new or used, full or partial set of original Stage carpets i will come back to you for sure 😉 Explenation is right there, i just missed it 🤦‍♂️. Thanks for pointing out. @soviet_merlin in the meantime, I received a reply from nengun, and i quote: "Thanks for your message and interest in Nengun. KG4900 is for the full set of floor mats, while KG4911 is only the Driver's Floor Mat. FR, RH means Front Right Hand Side. All the Full Set options are now discontinued. However, the Driver's Floor Mat options are still available according to the latest information available to us. We do not know what the differences would be, but if you only want the one mat, we can certainly see what we can find out for you". Interesting. It seems they still have some "new old stock" that Duncan mentioned 🤔. I wonder if they can provide any photos......And i also just realized that amayama have G4900 sets. I'm tempted too. 
    • Any update on this one? did you manage to get it fixed?    i'm having the same issue with my r34 and i believe its to do with the smart entry (keyless) control module but cant be sure without forking out to get a replacement  
    • So this being my first contribution to the SAU forums, I'd like to present and show how I had to solve probably one of the most annoying fixes on any car I've owned: replacing a speedometer (or "speedo") sensor on my newly acquired Series 1 Stagea 260RS Autech Version. I'm simply documenting how I went about to fix this issue, and as I understand it is relatively rare to happen to this generation of cars, it is a gigantic PITA so I hope this helps serve as reference to anyone else who may encounter this issue. NOTE: Although I say this is meant for the 260RS, because the gearbox/drivetrain is shared with the R33 GTR with the 5-speed manual, the application should be exactly the same. Background So after driving my new-to-me Stagea for about 1500km, one night while driving home the speedometer and odometer suddenly stopped working. No clunking noise, no indication something was broken, the speedometer would just stop reading anything and the odometer stopped going up. This is a huge worry for me, because my car is relatively low mileage (only 45k km when purchased) so although I plan to own the car for a long time, a mismatched odometer reading would be hugely detrimental to resale should the day come to sell the car. Thankfully this only occurred a mile or two from home so it wasn't extremely significant. Also, the OCD part of me would be extremely irked if the numbers that showed on my dash doesn't match the actual ageing of the car. Diagnosing I had been in communication with the well renown GTR shop in the USA, U.P.garage up near University Point in Washington state. After some back and forth they said it could be one of two things: 1) The speedometer sensor that goes into the transfer case is broken 2) The actual cluster has a component that went kaput. They said this is common in older Nissan gauge clusters and that would indicate a rebuild is necessary. As I tried to figure out if it was problem #1, I resolved problem #2 by sending my cluster over to Relentless Motorsports in Dallas, TX, whom is local to me and does cluster and ECU rebuilds. He is a one man operation who meticulously replaces every chip, resistor, capacitor, and electronic component on the PCB's on a wide variety of classic and modern cars. His specialty is Lexus and Toyota, but he came highly recommended by Erik of U.P.garage since he does the rebuilds for them on GTR clusters.  For those that don't know, on R32 and R33 GTR gearboxes, the speedometer sensor is mounted in the transfer case and is purely an analog mini "generator" (opposite of an alternator essentially). Based on the speed the sensor spins it generates an AC sine wave voltage up to 5V, and sends that via two wires up to the cluster which then interprets it via the speedometer dial. The signal does NOT go to the ECU first, the wiring goes to the cluster first then the ECU after (or so I'm told).  Problems/Roadblocks I first removed the part from the car on the underside of the transfer case (drain your transfer case fluid/ATF first, guess who found out that the hard way?), and noted the transfer case fluid was EXTREMELY black, most likely never changed on my car. When attempting to turn the gears it felt extremely gritty, as if something was binding the shaft from rotating properly. I got absolutely no voltage reading out of the sensor no matter how fast I turned the shaft. After having to reflow the solder on my AFM sensors based on another SAU guide here, I attempted to disassemble the silicone seal on the back of the sensor to see what happened inside the sensor; turns out, it basically disintegrated itself. Wonderful. Not only had the electrical components destroyed themselves, the magnetic portion on what I thought was on the shaft also chipped and was broken. Solution So solution: find a spare part right? Wrong. Nissan has long discontinued the proper sensor part number 32702-21U19, and it is no longer obtainable either through Nissan NSA or Nissan Japan. I was SOL without proper speed or mileage readings unless I figured out a way to replace this sensor. After tons of Googling and searching on SAU, I found that there IS however a sensor that looks almost exactly like the R33/260RS one: a sensor meant for the R33/R34 GTT and GTS-T with the 5 speed manual. The part number was 25010-21U00, and the body, plug, and shaft all looked exactly the same. The gear was different at the end, but knowing the sensor's gear is held on with a circlip, I figured I could just order the part and swap the gears. Cue me ordering a new part from JustJap down in Kirrawee, NSW, then waiting almost 3 weeks for shipping and customs clearing. The part finally arrives and what did I find? The freaking shaft lengths don't match. $&%* I discussed with Erik how to proceed, and figuring that I basically destroyed the sensor trying to get the shaft out of the damaged sensor from my car. we deemed it too dangerous to try and attempt to swap shafts to the correct length. I had to find a local CNC machinist to help me cut and notch down the shaft. After tons of frantic calling on a Friday afternoon, I managed to get hold of someone and he said he'd be able to do it over half a week. I sent him photos and had him take measurements to match not only the correct length and notch fitment, but also a groove to machine out to hold the retentive circlip. And the end result? *chef's kiss* Perfect. Since I didn't have pliers with me when I picked up the items, I tested the old gear and circlip on. Perfect fit. After that it was simply swapping out the plug bracket to the new sensor, mount it on the transfer case, refill with ATF/Nissan Matic Fluid D, then test out function. Thankfully with the rebuilt cluster and the new sensor, both the speedometer and odometer and now working properly!   And there you have it. About 5-6 weeks of headaches wrapped up in a 15 minute photo essay. As I was told it is rare for sensors of this generation to die so dramatically, but you never know what could go wrong with a 25+ year old car. I HOPE that no one else has to go through this problem like I did, so with my take on a solution I hope it helps others who may encounter this issue in the future. For the TL;DR: 1) Sensor breaks. 2) Find a replacement GTT/GTS-T sensor. 3) Find a CNC machinist to have you cut it down to proper specs. 4) Reinstall then pray to the JDM gods.   Hope this guide/story helps anyone else encountering this problem!
    • So this being my first contribution to the SAU forums, I'd like to present and show how I had to solve probably one of the most annoying fixes on any car I've owned: replacing a speedometer (or "speedo") sensor on my newly acquired Series 1 Stagea 260RS Autech Version. I'm simply documenting how I went about to fix this issue, and as I understand it is relatively rare to happen to this generation of cars, it is a gigantic PITA so I hope this helps serve as reference to anyone else who may encounter this issue. NOTE: Although I say this is meant for the 260RS, because the gearbox/drivetrain is shared with the R33 GTR with the 5-speed manual, the application should be exactly the same. Background So after driving my new-to-me Stagea for about 1500km, one night while driving home the speedometer and odometer suddenly stopped working. No clunking noise, no indication something was broken, the speedometer would just stop reading anything and the odometer stopped going up. This is a huge worry for me, because my car is relatively low mileage (only 45k km when purchased) so although I plan to own the car for a long time, a mismatched odometer reading would be hugely detrimental to resale should the day come to sell the car. Thankfully this only occurred a mile or two from home so it wasn't extremely significant. Also, the OCD part of me would be extremely irked if the numbers that showed on my dash doesn't match the actual ageing of the car. Diagnosing I had been in communication with the well renown GTR shop in the USA, U.P.garage up near University Point in Washington state. After some back and forth they said it could be one of two things: 1) The speedometer sensor that goes into the transfer case is broken 2) The actual cluster has a component that went kaput. They said this is common in older Nissan gauge clusters and that would indicate a rebuild is necessary. As I tried to figure out if it was problem #1, I resolved problem #2 by sending my cluster over to Relentless Motorsports in Dallas, TX, whom is local to me and does cluster and ECU rebuilds. He is a one man operation who meticulously replaces every chip, resistor, capacitor, and electronic component on the PCB's on a wide variety of classic and modern cars. His specialty is Lexus and Toyota, but he came highly recommended by Erik of U.P.garage since he does the rebuilds for them on GTR clusters.  For those that don't know, on R32 and R33 GTR gearboxes, the speedometer sensor is mounted in the transfer case and is purely an analog mini "generator" (opposite of an alternator essentially). Based on the speed the sensor spins it generates an AC sine wave voltage up to 5V, and sends that via two wires up to the cluster which then interprets it via the speedometer dial. The signal does NOT go to the ECU first, the wiring goes to the cluster first then the ECU after (or so I'm told).  Problems/Roadblocks I first removed the part from the car on the underside of the transfer case (drain your transfer case fluid/ATF first, guess who found out that the hard way?), and noted the transfer case fluid was EXTREMELY black, most likely never changed on my car. When attempting to turn the gears it felt extremely gritty, as if shttps://imgur.com/6TQCG3xomething was binding the shaft from rotating properly. After having to reflow the solder on my AFM sensors based on another SAU guide here, I attempted to disassemble the silicone seal on the back of the sensor to see what happened inside the sensor; turns out, it basically disintegrated itself. Wonderful. Not only had the electrical components destroyed themselves, the magnetic portion on what I thought was on the shaft also chipped and was broken. Solution So solution: find a spare part right? Wrong. Nissan has long discontinued the proper sensor part number 32702-21U19, and it is no longer obtainable either through Nissan NSA or Nissan Japan. I was SOL without proper speed or mileage readings unless I figured out a way to replace this sensor. After tons of Googling and searching on SAU, I found that there IS however a sensor that looks almost exactly like the R33/260RS one: a sensor meant for the R33/R34 GTT and GTS-T with the 5 speed manual. The part number was 25010-21U00, and the body, plug, and shaft all looked exactly the same. The gear was different at the end, but knowing the sensor's gear is held on with a circlip, I figured I could just order the part and swap the gears. Cue me ordering a new part from JustJap down in Kirrawee, NSW, then waiting almost 3 weeks for shipping and customs clearing. The part finally arrives and what did I find? The freaking shaft lengths don't match. $&%* I discussed with Erik how to proceed, and figuring that I basically destroyed the sensor trying to get the shaft out of the damaged sensor from my car. we deemed it too dangerous to try and attempt to swap shafts to the correct length. I had to find a local CNC machinist to help me cut and notch down the shaft. After tons of frantic calling on a Friday afternoon, I managed to get hold of someone and he said he'd be able to do it over half a week. I sent him photos and had him take measurements to match not only the correct length and notch fitment, but also a groove to machine out to hold the retentive circlip. And the end result? *chef's kiss* Perfect. Since I didn't have pliers with me when I picked up the items, I tested the old gear and circlip on. Perfect fit. After that it was simply swapping out the plug bracket to the new sensor, mount it on the transfer case, refill with ATF/Nissan Matic Fluid D, then test out function. Thankfully with the rebuilt cluster and the new sensor, both the speedometer and odometer and now working properly!   And there you have it. About 5-6 weeks of headaches wrapped up in a 15 minute photo essay. As I was told it is rare for sensors of this generation to die so dramatically, but you never know what could go wrong with a 25+ year old car. I HOPE that no one else has to go through this problem like I did, so with my take on a solution I hope it helps others who may encounter this issue in the future. For the TL;DR: 1) Sensor breaks. 2) Find a replacement GTT/GTS-T sensor. 3) Find a CNC machinist to have you cut it down to proper specs. 4) Reinstall then pray to the JDM gods.   Hope this guide/story helps anyone else encountering this problem!
    • perhaps i should have mentioned, I plugged the unit in before i handed over to the electronics repair shop to see what damaged had been caused and the unit worked (ac controls, rear demister etc) bar the lights behind the lcd. i would assume that the diode was only to control lighting and didnt harm anything else i got the unit back from the electronics repair shop and all is well (to a point). The lights are back on and ac controls are working. im still paranoid as i beleive the repairer just put in any zener diode he could find and admitted asking chatgpt if its compatible   i do however have another issue... sometimes when i turn the ignition on, the climate control unit now goes through a diagnostics procedure which normally occurs when you disconnect and reconnect but this may be due to the below   to top everything off, and feel free to shoot me as im just about to do it myself anyway, while i was checking the newly repaired board by plugging in the climate control unit bare without the housing, i believe i may have shorted it on the headunit surround. Climate control unit still works but now the keyless entry doesnt work along with the dome light not turning on when you open the door. to add to this tricky situation, when you start the car and remove the key ( i have a turbo timer so car remains on) the keyless entry works. the dome light also works when you switch to the on position. fuses were checked and all ok ive deduced that the short somehow has messed with the smart entry control module as that is what controls the keyless entry and dome light on door opening   you guys wouldnt happen to have any experience with that topic lmao... im only laughing as its all i can do right now my self diagnosed adhd always gets me in a situation as i have no patience and want to get everything done in shortest amount of time as possible often ignoring crucial steps such as disconnecting battery when stuffing around with electronics or even placing a simple rag over the metallic headunit surround when placing a live pcb board on top of it   FML
×
×
  • Create New...