reverse in a manual tranny

[bensenvill]

figured I'd ask here as it seems to be the place for stick shift hold-outs.

I took a lancer for a test drive last year and was doing a 3 point turn, depressed the clutch and swapped into reverse while the car still had some forward momentum and was treated to a bad noise and alot of burnt clutch (and having to pull the car back into the dealership with that very persistent odor).

I learned clutch on a ford contour and this whole reverse while still rolling forward thing was new to me. (there is a hell of a lot of work and fun parts in that tranny, its hard to say if its not suppose to like doing that or not) but I've asked a number of other people with my car platform and some mazda3 owners and no one has said this should be an issue.

I ended up buying a honda fit and its also a car that doesn't like swapping into reverse while drifting forward. But rather than burning the clutch it makes a pretty horrid grear grinding noise. I was told by the Fit group that the reason for this is because the tranny doesn't have a synchro for reverse and that NO CAR has this.

Now I'm perfectly content with not dropping into reverse unless I am at a complete stand still but are there cars out there that can do this?

[Frank Lee]

What purpose does shifting into r while moving serve?

I think that lil maneuver would grind ANY m/t.

[bensenvill]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

What purpose does shifting into r while moving serve?

to have the gear preselected before you have to engage it (which is when the grind/burn occures, before actual engaugement)? I guess the only time it really comes into play is when your parallel parking on a fowardly facing slope and your in a hurry. And I'm not talking doing this at 7mph, I mean senior center walking speed.

[Christ]

You do not put the transmission into reverse until you're stopped. Reverse gear is straight cut, and does not have a synchronizer. YOU WILL GRIND at any speed, potentially.

Being in a hurry is just a bad excuse for not coming to a complete stop.

And how exactly did you manage to burn the clutch because you shifted into reverse too early? The two events are not related, by far. You burned the clutch because you were leaving it partly engaged and overheated it revving the engine. You heard the unpleasant noise because you attempted to engage a gear moving in the opposite direction of your vehicle while the vehicle was still in motion.

I suggest you learn a little bit longer on a junker before buying any other manual car. Patience is key in a manual, and the key is to shift slowly and deliberately, not slam it into gear like a ricer.

[shovel]

yeah i have no idea what the problem is here either.. just wait till you're stopped to shift, it doesn't hurt i promise!

[Ryland]

Grinding is normal if you try to shift in to reverse without stopping, burning the clutch is not normal, the only time I've smelled a burning clutch was while trying to teach someone how to do a hill start, half an hour on a hill stalling the car and slipping the clutch and even after that it was not bad, really faint.

[bgd73]

wow. all that work by geniuses to get us to go forward..of course reverse has no synchro. you need full stop. some clutch setups even have a brake to stop it...just for reverse. that is the synch for reverse...no movement at all.

autos squishy squash there way around with hydraulics (it proves how inneficient they really are: drop it in reverse while moving forward).

I wouldn't be letting you drive my old 10 geared subaru no doubts...

[pstrbrc]

Originally Posted by bgd73

wow. all that work by geniuses to get us to go forward..of course reverse has no synchro.

Sorry, that's wrong. Ford/Mazda has had synchro'ed reverse since, iirc, 1992. Introduced in Escorts, 323/Protoge, MX-3 transmissions. So, yeah, if someone learned on one of these, they'd have NOT learned about non-synchro reverse. So give the guy a break. He didn't know that the only manual shift car he's driven was an anomaly.

Now, about the smell of burning clutch, I'd guess it was the lightweight transmission fluid they use in modern manual transmissions instead of gear lube. I suspect that it might be a transmission that does something amusing like puke fluid out somewhere when the input shaft is accidentally spun backwards, like when the transmission is shifted into reverse while the wheels are still spinning forward.

[Rainh2o]

maybe the clutch burning was the fact that the car was moving forward and it took a lot more clutch slipping to get the car to stop and then going backwards?

[Clev]

My '04 Saturn Ion has synchronized reverse. It makes it easy to be lazy.