yea even if im rolling forwad like 1mph my tranny hates it when i put it into reverse, i think everyone has this problem

 

I don't nkow about Civic's but on my old corolla(my friends MX3 did the same thing) you had to put the clutch in and then let it out just a little and it would go into reverse.

 

Yea, all manual cars do this, this is by design. It does not happen all the time, though, but only when gears get positioned so they can't engage. Letting clutch on and offor shifting it into some other gears turns the gears and puts them in a different position, allowing for engagement... I believe mill$civic posted a link to the operating trasmission flash a while ago, you can see how things work pretty good....

 

^YOu say "all cars", but I've driven my share of manuals that didn't do this at all...ever

 

Now we are back to a normal state of disagreement
I guess you are right, I should have said "many". It does not change the "by design" part, though

 

Mine does that but I don't like to do it that way. And like everyone else, i could go from 1st to reverse but insted of 1st i have to use 3rd, if I use 1st it will grind.

 

I drove my stepbrother's 95 DX MT a few times.

You need to be:

1: At a DEAD stop
2: In another gear

in order to shift to reverse. If you are moving even 1 MPH forward, or if you had it in neutral before pushing in the clutch, GRUUUNCH!!!!

If you can't find it, don't grind it. Try another gear first. I once went into four different gears before it would engage reverse. I usually go N -> gear 3 -> gear R.

If your Reverse gear is grinding (not like "it won't go in", I mean like "GRUUUNCH") after synching with another gear and you are stopped completely, then the clutch is not fully engaging and your clutch pedal needs to be adjusted.


When I drove the '91 Explorer for a month, I found out that the old bloke does in fact have a synchronizer in reverse. At least I think it does. Reverse was WAAAAY easier to engage in the Explorer than the Honda. Either that or the Explorer has 192,000 miles and the gears are so worn down it doesn't matter what happens, it just goes into Reverse with little effort, but I really doubt that.

Oh yeah BTW going from 5th to 2nd in the Explorer is a really BAD thing. The 4.0L V6 OHV runs out of steam at only 4000 RPM, and if you are stupid enough to bring it up past 5000 (the redline) you deserve to have the shortly thereafter catastrophic destruction of the engine. Also, the entire drivetrain has immense inertia, so I would not be surprised if other things break as well if you pull a stunt like that. Fastest I ever put it was just under 4000, immediately followed by an upshift, when I quickly realized power was dropping off fast.

And I thought the A/C-breaking chassis flex was bad enough...

 

Right, I can see where all trannys would be suseptable due to design. My Camry never once did that to me, nor did my Jetta, or my truck for that matter. Come to think of it, the Civic is the first car I've owned that did do it

 

thats what your supposed to to, shift into 1st before reverse, it re-aligns everything.

 

Thanks for all the help, although shifting into 1st before I do anything else STILL doesn't work 50% of the time.