ericdwong

...provided that somebody can find the gears that fit and are ideal from another car or get them made. Today I was poking around my transmission and I pressed 5th, 4th and 3rd gears off. For those who do not know, 3rd gear blew up on me (it might have been a friends fault...) and I had my old transmission parts from when 2nd gear blew up on me, so I am trying to save money by stealing 3rd gear from my last transmission and putting them onto my current one. It really was not all that hard to press the gears off. It just took a combination of a snap ring plier, and various 2 and 3 jaw pullers (I guess they dont call them gear pullers for nothing). Oh yea and the rentals are free. I havent reassembled yet, but from the looks of things, changing the gear ratios would be pretty easy. 1st and 2nd arent easily done because they are integrated on the input shaft of the tranny and you would have to get an entire shaft made.

Now apparently you can guy the output shaft and final drive gear to change the final drive ratio. Now that my transmission is torn apart anyway its kinda tempting....still havent decided whether to loose the car not not. I'll have pics up.

dmbmaxima2k2

iTrader: (1)

bless you eric, you've done a lot of work with these trannies and you should be praised.

Chunger

iTrader: (1)

It would be awesome if we could find a steep 5th gear to drop the revs down (maybe even below the autos).

mingo

iTrader: (4)

is it possible to add an extra gear in there? two speed reverse??? j/k.. i meant 6th gear

Dave B

Sounds cool and all. I just can't help but think your current tranny problems are from your own doing. There is a reason why people go to school and use special tools to work on late model cars these days.


Dave

ericdwong

Maybe... but I think its also a combination of bad luck and the fact that the night before.. i let one of my friends drive my car back from the club cause i turned 21 and I got toasty. I rode in a different car on the way home, but after interviewing other passengers in my car they said that 1) he mentioned 3rd gear was hard to get into (which I didnt find to be the case on the ride down or the next day) and 2) he stalled it out cause he put it into 3rd gear instead of 1st when trying to leave the parking lot. I never drove the car until the next day driving to the drag strip when my 3rd gear failed after never making it there. So never let someone else drive your car...

As for goin to school and complex tolls... well the manual transmission really isnt extremely complicated. Even in the factory service manual of the manual transmission part theres nothing in there thats exotic. Infact I dont think its any different then a syncho mesh system from the 1970s or earlier. Theres no electronics, just some tolerances. The people who have been inside can vouch for this one, as the design itself is pretty idiotproof from reassembling something incorrectly. Just make sure all your tolerances and clearances are correct with feeler guages and dial indicators and order the right parts. Yes its down to the thousandth of an inch but all that is measureable. My bearings from the differential are perfect, so thats a good sign.


Oh yeah I was examining some more, a 6th gear from a 2002 would be a good gear to replace the current 5th with. The 4th gen's 5th gear is .785 and the 6th from 2002s is .64x i believe. however the synchro mechanism has gotta be the same size as what is already there or it will not work. Anybody know where I can get the dimension sizes for the 2002 internals?

Kevin Wong

From the day my family bought our 97 Maxima, I thought the gear ratios could be much better. I'm thinking if you change out the 5th gear to a taller ratio, say .6??...and shorten the final, we can get better mileage and faster times.

IceY2K1

iTrader: (3)

My car is used for 95+% hwy FLYING, as in 85+mph and it kills me to know I'm pulling close to 4000rpms for hours on end.

If it's possible to drop 5th down into the 2-3K rpm range for 80-85mph, I WILL do this when I blow out the clutch. I'll have the same guy that does Cattmans' installs do the Quaife, clutch, flywheel, and shorter 5th gear.

Keep us posted! Thanks.