3rd gear in a 360

[sfella]

Morning, just wondered if anyone else has had a similar issue. For ages 3rd gear on my 360 has been a pain when driven, spiritedly. It's near impossible to show a dealer as unleas your at full attack it's ok. On up or down shift it doesn't want to go and if your not careful will crunch. Its had a clutch and the rubber/plastic grommet on the gear linkage replaced to no avail. Gray Paul road test every service and comment no issue found, I accept this is true as in fairly normal it's ok but if I take it to.the top of revs in 2nd 3rd is hard work. Top of the revs in 3rd to 4th is perfect but coming down from 4th to 3rd at speed is same problem. Pain as you loose so much momentum and when you need engine breaking it's not there. Any help? Cheers

[Bebs]

Sounds like gear linkage adjustment needed. Book it in with Aldous at AV Engineering.
My manual 360 shifts near perfectly in all combinations.

[johnnyreggae]

Daft sounding suggestion (because it happened to me): slow the gearchange down to ensure clutch is fully disengaged and lever fully home

[davek_964]

Never had that problem in mine, even when driven very hard.

[Roof down]

3rd gear synchro I would guess, had this on mine and it had only done 30k, it’s quite common apparently.
Ed Blasi at AV soon had it fixed.

[cgt2]

I had the exact same issue as described. Just needs minor adjustment, as described Ed can sort it easily.

[sfella]

Roof down said:

3rd gear synchro I would guess, had this on mine and it had only done 30k, it’s quite common apparently.
Ed Blasi at AV soon had it fixed.

This is what I suspect. Had a chat with my local garage, they have just taken on an ex Ferrari guy. They're coming back to me with a price. Without being rude any recollection on price?

Mines on 22k and has been like it a while but fed up now as it really loses momentum on the way up and prevents using engine braking on the way down.

[voicey]

Before you go ahead and change the synchro, you really ought to establish if the cause is elsewhere. The synchro may very well be bad but there is a good chance that something else has caused it to go bad. Sometimes they go wrong on their own and sometimes they get damaged because of a separate issue. It would be a shame to replace the synchro only to have to change it again further down the line.

The actual labour to repair a gearbox is fairly minimal - about 5-6 hours (plus removal/refitting). The big proportion of the cost is the parts - which can only be determined once you're in there. They can quickly escalate: 3/4th synchro is the best part of £1k but if the teeth are damaged on the pinion gears then you can add nearly another £1k per gear. If you've been crunching the gears then it is very likely that the teeth are no longer the proper shape.

Another consideration is your ownership horizon - I have an annoying off throttle whine in 3rd and need to replace the 3/4 synchro and 3rd pinion gear. When I get the time to do the job, I will also replace the 5/6 synchro as I don't want to be back in there in the future.

Finally, when choosing someone to rebuild the gearbox please make sure they have the correct tools. I've opened loads of boxes to find chisel marks everywhere because someone has been hacking around without the specific tooling.

Edited by voicey on Wednesday 6th January 21:15