so everytime i go into 3rd or 4th gear, it grinds...
unless i pause in nuetral and ease it in, if you go fast at all it grinds

is the linkage not tight enough or something?

 

when was the last time you checked your tranny fluid? or changed? you shouldn't have to change it to often.

 

It's a syncro most likely. Known problem. If you don't have enough time/money to rebuild the tranny, put heavier oil there, it will will be a bit better.

 

yea sound like syncros, i got the same problem. hondas are notorious for this. i was told just save and get a new tranny since changing the syncros is expensive.

 

ya my 2nd gear does this mostly when its cold. I changed my tranny fluid to GM synchromesh and it helped alot, dont even notice it anymore

 

My third gear did it all the time. Really embarrassing. Makes it look like you cant find the gear. I had mine rebuilt asap. Honda charged me 350 to replace the syncros. I took the tranny itself up there. Save a little money and take it out yourself.

 

heavier oil as in... gear lube type stuff thats like 40w-50?

 

definitely not 40w. I believe honda recommedns smth like 10w-40 or 20w-40, so if you can find smth along those lines with last digits 50, it would be your best bet I believe. And do you know what you have there, btw? If not, that would be a good idea to start with what honda recommends

 

Check your motor mounts, if they're bad it likes to cause grinds like that. Simple fix and is normally overlooked. Check the rear one especially.

A synchro helps match the speeds of the transmission to the engine for each gear, if it's going bad it won't do that. A bad synchro will normally not let you shift into the next gear at high Rs, shifting will be like slamming the shifter into a wall, and then it will go in once the revs come down.

 

Yeah, when they wear out completely. And on civics that I happen to have, this was not that dramatic. They were/are just slowly getting worse and worse. I let it last for about 20K before I decided to drop and rebuild the tranny on my 84' (for clutch replacement), and I still have this tired syncro on my 92', and I bought this car about 60K back, and syncro was slightly bad already... I'm probably just too lazy, I don't mind waiting extra half a second when shifting into third to let the syncro do its job...