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As per the sticky above, the car is a 1991 Ford Escort, 152,000 miles with a 5 speed manual.
Ok, my Escort was driving perfect up until today. I got into and now no matter what I do, it grinds into 2nd gear. All other gears work perfectly. I changed the transmission fluid last year and I checked the level and it is fine. The car is not worth putting money into as it is a junker. My question is could it possibly be something cheap and simple? My gut feeling is it is going to need a new transmission. That means I will dump the car. My other question is if it is ok to just go from 1st gear to 3rd gear and just keep driving it? I did try that today, and it seemed to do fine, but for how long?
Sounds like the synchros went bad. If you can do the work maybe through a junkyard tranny in. If you are fine with 1st to 3rd, go for it and save hard for a new car.
It will be fine, the only down fall is less gas mileage, as you ride first out, and probably wear the main bearings a little more by "puffing" the car in 3rd gear(low rpm, to low a gear, trying to accelerate). Might also pit a litttle more wear and tear on the clutch.
First thing I'd check would be that the clutch is completely disengaging.
IIRC, this car has a hydraulic clutch linkage and if the fluid is low, then you'll not be completely disengaging the clutch even though you are pushing the pedal fully to the floor ... don't forget that even the distance of pedal travel lost to floor mats can be significant in a marginal situation. Look closely, too, at the "pedal box"; ie, the supporting structure from which the clutch pedal is suspended and the linkages/bushings involved which actuate the clutch master cylinder. Lost motion here in pedal travel can cause the master cylinder to not be acutated fully and due to the plastic bushings involved can be a typical failure area.
In addition to the hydraulic fluid level being low, there's the possibility of the clutch master or slave cylinder not functioning properly with internal losses.
It's not unusual for one gear to be more sensitive about some dragging from the clutch than others due to the internal design of the transmission. In this case, 2nd gear may be the one that is most sensitive due to normal wear ... the synchro's in many transmissions for 2nd gear take a lot of abuse on shifts compared to higher ratio gears. But to have a catastrophic failure of the 2nd gear synchro's all at once is a rather remote liklihood.
You should also check out the bushings involved in the shift linkage itself. Like the clutch linkage bushings, these can wear out or fail and the shifter will not line up properly to cleanly engage a particular gear; in this case, 2nd gear. The net effect is that the shifter is trying to shift into two gears at the same time even though you are properly positioning the gearshift lever into the correct area for the 2nd gear selection. You'd be surprised at how many times this is an issue ... a broken several dollar plastic bushing external to the transmission is the sole causation of a failure of the transmission to shift properly.
Check the simple stuff first and eliminate their possibility before you go jumping to the worst case scenario of a very rare failure mode of transmission internal hard parts.
2nd gear syncro went bad. It is the most common one to fail. You can drive it forever that way. With a little technique the grinding can be greatly reduced and even though it sounds horrible the gears do not show much wear even after years of driving with failed syncros. You are gonna get a rebuilt tranny someday anyway. So when it starts popping out of second while you are accelerating (probably 10 years from now) its time to switch. Until then, think of it as a part of your car's charm.
Others, can tell him how to double clutch this thing into second.
PS: If you skip second, you will replace the clutch long before that gearbox gives up the ghost. So why? You will replace the clutch when you replace the gearbox but why hasten the inevitable?
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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The cost of replacing the syncros, and perhaps the clutch while at it will be under $1,000. Your value is at about $2,500, but if the engine is strong, assuming it's paid for, you will still be a lot better off than another down payment and car payment. My '97 has 164,000 miles on it now and
at 30+ mpg still makes a great commuter to the park & ride, saving gas and wear on my newer vehicle. I had to replace the clutch at 155,000 miles and it turned out to be the original, and was not worn out but simply disintegrated from age.
No way. According to KBB, which is biased towards the seller, when you plug in the numbers, his car is only worth $622 in "fair" condition, private party sale-- if you've seen the picture LVD has posted a few times, in terms of external appearance even "fair" might be a stretch.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,585 posts, read 81,225,683 times
Reputation: 57825
Quote:
Originally Posted by vegaspilgrim
No way. According to KBB, which is biased towards the seller, when you plug in the numbers, his car is only worth $622 in "fair" condition, private party sale-- if you've seen the picture LVD has posted a few times, in terms of external appearance even "fair" might be a stretch.
Just drive it as previously posted. you can either go 1st to 3rd or when you come out of first put the car in neutral let the clutch out push the clutch back in and slip it into second. You can also try speed matching.
With out pushing in the clutch let off the gas pull the trans out of first and with firm but gentle pressure hold it against the second gear gate. When the engine rpm and transmission speed match it will slide right into gear.
Just drive it as previously posted. you can either go 1st to 3rd or when you come out of first put the car in neutral let the clutch out push the clutch back in and slip it into second. You can also try speed matching.
With out pushing in the clutch let off the gas pull the trans out of first and with firm but gentle pressure hold it against the second gear gate. When the engine rpm and transmission speed match it will slide right into gear.
I wouldn't try "speed matching" shifting on this car unless it was positively verified that the shift linkages/bushings were actually trying to select only one gear.
As I posted above, the failure mode of the bushings allows the shift linkage to try to operate two shift rails at the same time so the shifter is attempting to engage two gears ... hence the clash of the balky shift into 2nd gear.
The shift technique of matching RPM's and road speed works only if the causation of the poor shifting on this car is a clutch disengagement problem ... which is still very much a possibility. From a diagnostic perspective, this could be one way to isolate the problem to the clutch if good shifts could be made without using it.
Still, however, it's worthwhile to check the basic simple stuff ... like the hydraulic actuation before jumping to any other conclusions.
PS ... can't tell you how many cars through the last 30 years I have either repaired at a very minimal cost to the customer or purchased at distress price points because of folk (especially unknowlegeable auto techs) mis-diagnosing these types of problems and the owner believing that their car was not worth anything in light of the prospective costs of repair. As it is now, I've got a neighbor with a 1998 Ford F-250 Powerstroke w/manual transmission who has been dealing with poor shifting in two gears and was told by the dealer that the transmission was blown. I looked at it the other day and verified that the plastic bushings in the pedal box were worn out, shredded ... so the clutch pedal movement wasn't pushing the linkage all the way in on the clutch master cylinder. The fellow is a former auto shop tech and he couldn't see the problem until I had him place one hand on the linkage while pushing the clutch pedal with his other hand. Then he got to see and feel the lost motion of the assembly. A whole $18 repair kit at the local Ford dealer and less than 2 hours to R&R and install the kit to restore proper functionality which the dealer techs had misdiagnosed for years.
Similarly ... a bunch of years on Toyota products (yes, I realize this thread is about a Ford Escort) where the plastic bushings at the bottom of the shift lever on top of the transmission tower wear out so that the shifter can no longer properly select and engage one shift rail. It's a common wear problem which I know has been a boon to the tranny shops ... misdiagnosing that a trans is blown or synchro's are blown requiring a trans overhaul when the causation is only a couple dollar bushing that is accessed from the inside of the vehicle with the trans intact.
My wife had a trip back from a Texas sale barn auction a few years ago, and found herself unable to shift her Ranger pick-up truck into gear after pulling off the highway for a fuel stop. In her panic with a full load of livestock on board, she was pretty upset. The shop at the fuel stop "diagnosed" that her truck had blown the transmission with 150,000 miles on it. I told her how to check the fluid level in the clutch reservoir, and it was empty. She bought a can of DOT 3 fluid and filled the reservoir, and pumped the clutch pedal a number of times. The system bled out and she was able to make it home without further incident, although she was adding DOT 3 fluid at every fuel stop as it seeped out past the clutch slave cylinder while driving down the highway.
I simply cannot overemphasize the importance of starting the diagnostic process by checking out the simple and more common failure aspects of this type of problem than to jump to the conclusion of a sudden catastrophic failure in a mechanical system. Yes, they can happen ... but they're most likely the causation in less the a couple percent of the failures on the road. It's entirely too easy and profitable in this business to jump to those most far difficult hidden problems than it is to check out the basics. 'nother case in point ... I have bought very inexpensively (and then sold) many M-B diesel cars where the owner was advised that the poor running engine was due to it being worn out, often at a relatively low mileage. I've had cars come into my shop with a distressed owner willing to dump the car for almost nothing, highly disappointed with the vaunted M-B durability and reliability image they'd paid a lot of money for. Only to buy the car and find that the filters hadn't been changed and between the plugged up air filter and fuel filter, the car could not possibly run properly. I've literally taken a $2,500 purchase, put $100 worth of service and filters into it, and re-sold an excellent car for $10,000 that started and ran flawlessly ... after my competitors (dealerships as well as some of the local "snob" M-B shops with "factory trained experts") condemned the car as needing an engine overhaul. Same thing with Audi's ....
Last edited by sunsprit; 11-27-2011 at 11:55 AM..
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