Does anybody know if there has been any problems with stick Maxima's? Has anybody had a problem? My freinds Stick dropped to neutral when he hit forth gear. Whats going on?

 

It may have to do with something we call the fuel-cut condition. Do a search under fuel-cut in the 5th Gen Forum.

 

Are you saying that it was in 4th then just kinda slipped out? If so, that don't sound too good. IIRC it's a going-going-gone syncro. It may also be the gear itself.

The other thing that it could be is if your 'friend' leaves his hand on the shifter, a very bad thing to do, and your 'friend' was just cruising at just the right RPM it is very easy to slip it out of gear. Again this procedure is not good for the syncros.

I am sure that I will be corrected for whatever errors I put in here.

 

Well...I have a very close look of a synchronizer just the other day. And as far as I know, it will not hurt the synchronizer if you rest your hands on your shifter.

At a certain RPM (and if you're not accelerating), your transmission will not be transmitting any torque to your wheels or vise versa. The gears are designed such that if either the engine or the wheels (from momentum) transmits a load, the teeth of the gears are engaged and it is very hard for it to slip out. But at the correct RPM, no load is transmitted, and thus the gears semi disengages and then it can be shifted into neutral without a clutch.

If you are in gear, you can never hurt the syncros if you rest your hand on the shifter, that is because they are not spinning relative to one another (they are spinning at the same speed). And if at the right RPM you just happen to push it out, the syncro wont be hurt because they left each other at the same speed, and thus no added friction. it is only if you shift into the gear that the syncro is used to speed up the input shaft (engine). Resting your hand on the shifter on neutral might partially engage the syncros, but I doubt it. You'll notice that when you shift into neutral from gear, it tends to "snap" into neutral. That is a design feature that "helps" you to find and stay in neutral...so unless you put a lot of force on the shifter, it wont partially engage.

In my opinion, rev matching is a waste of gas. Syncros are designed to do the revving up of the input shaft, and if you have ever looked at one, they have double redundancies built into them. For one, they are usually of a cup-cone configuration, and if the syncro wears down, the cone just has to engaged a little "deeper" into the cut, but more friction material is still there for use. And if the cup is so worn out, there is still the upper "lip" of the cup, which has more friction material. This material is more rough, and thus speeding up of the input shaft might be a little faster and a small jerk might be felt from a slight slow down of the car.

That is from my observations of a synchronizer. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Green