Do any of you 5spd guys experience major jolts every time you release the gas pedal and then reapply (especially in 3rd gear). Someone mentioned it was just the maxima drive train but now its starting to get really annoying. The car is so smooth until you take your foot off the gas and then reapply the gas pedal. I've tried everything from keeping the rev's really low to keeping them really high.

Any comments

DT

 

Check you motor mounts, as well as transmossion mounts. They may be just worn out.

 

The car has only 50K miles on it. Also its not a vibration it just feels jerky.

 

Does the jolt stop immeditely, or does the entire car have oscillations for a few seconds or so after you nail the gas? If the latter, then you probbly have a busted motor mount. You can bust a motor mount at 150 miles, or 150,000 it doesnt really matter. You wont really feel much more vibration at idle with a blown mount, but you will feel more clutch chatter. If your car is not experiencing these problems, then its just the nature of the car. Alot of slop and flop in the drivetrain. You can cut down some of it by polyurethaning the motor mounts.

 

No its a very abrupt jerk. Maybe Im just not used to the Maxima. I've driven Hondas in the past and have never noticed it. It seems as soon as you take your foot off the gas the car decelerates (as if you are in too high a gear or your parking break is stuck) Then when you reapply the gas it feels like the car has way to much power (i.e the gear is too low)....very weird but perhaps its a Maxima chararcteristic. I can't believe any ex honda owners have made the comparison in the forum before.

 

...I'm no mechanic, but I had the same problem in my '89Prelude a number of years ago - check your CV (constant velocity) boots and joints - that was the problem on the 'Lude.

My 2 cents.

Mark

 

mine didn't start until AFTER I got it back from the dealership for a bad differential bearing repair. My guess is they didn't tighten things up enough in the drivetrain causing the jolt that you described. Every time I gun it after taking my foot off the gas at around 3K it feels like I've been rear ended by an 18 wheeler.

 

This is common in cars with engines that have relatively high compression ratios. When you let off the gas the car will decelerate quickly (called engine braking) because the engine is trying to compress a lot of air to a very high pressure. This causes the engine to "roll" forward against the motor mounts. When you reapply the gas the engine makes power NOW and rolls very quickly in the opposite direction and causes the jerking sensation. This is probably more noticeable in the Max because of the liquid-filled motor mounts which allow the engine to move around more than rubber or urethane mounts. The harder mounts would reduce the amount of jerk (and wheelhop for modded guys) but would also trasmit more engine vibration to the car.

 

Since clutch chatter was mentioned as a culprit of worn motor mounts, is there a better mount out there other than OEM? Also, I have a late '99 5spd that seems to have the EXACT symptoms described for the 5th gen. Fuel Shutoff TSB. I think this might have contributed to my mounts going bad, if they are. Could that TSB apply to me?

 

Just wondering if any of the posters to this thread had any resolution to this problem. I have a 98 SE w/ 70K that has this problem. It's most noticeable in 1st and 2nd gears. The car has been doing it since I got it about 9 months ago. I didn’t think it was too bad, but I drove a friend’s 99 GXE 5 speed last week, and the difference was amazing. The on/off throttle transition felt like an automatic’s.

 

I thought it was just typical of engine breaking as well. I've driven a number of manuals (including two hondas, to respond to the original dated post) and all needed to be feathered softly off and on the gas, especially in lower gears. None of the cars were new cars, so I'm not sure about mounts. My way around this a lot of the time (read: when I'm lazy and don't feel like feathering) is to drop to neutral, and double-clutch when gas is needed later on. Of course, this is better in some situations than others.

Really, I just thought this was something that happened in all manual transmission cars. Now if only I could be sure that my intermittent clutch issues were due to mounts...(THAT never happened in the hondas. Casualty of torque?)

 

For me, this is not a shifting problem. With the clutch fully engaged in 1st or 2nd, the car bucks during an on/off/on throttle transition. I haven't done any investigation yet, but the first things that come to mind are a broken engine/tranmission mount, or CV joint slop.

 

I understand that. I was talking about feathering the gas pedal when the clutch is fully engaged. If I ease off the gas pedal just right along with the feel of the car, I can still come off smooth. How much depends on what gear I'm in, and if I'm on an incline in any way.

With the hondas I used to drive I figured it was a symptom of short gearing.

 

- Anyone try the Cattman urethane motor mounts to solve the problem?