Hi, I recently bought an 01 Stratus R/T with manual transmission. When shifting into third gear (with the clutch pressed in), there is a slight grinding noise before the gear is engaged.

I've been doing some reading about transmissions and my guess is that it sounds like a faulty synchro on the collar for that gear. My friend (who I bought the car from), had previously brought it to a mechanic, who told her that a tooth on the gear was probably chipped off, and that there's no way to fix it except to get a new tranny. This could be her bad translation of what the mechanic said, but I don't see any way in hell that a tooth on the gear could be chipped off because its always connected to the layshaft. The only part of the gear that actually gets engaged are holes on the side of the gear which get engaged by the collar and synchro.

So does anyone have any input on this? Is this a common problem? How much should it cost me?

 

I think you're right about the synchro. My 04 cavalier did the same thing. I let it go for a few months since it still grabbed properly, and it wound up "rejecting" second gear after a while. It would engage, but spit it back to neutral under load. It was covered under extended warrenty, so the transmission was replaced, although the mechanic figured it could be repaired for about 300$, but he was pushing for a complete internal rebuild (woulden't cost me more than the 100$ deductable anyways, so why not?). The transmission didn't look like it would be too scary to work on either. Not much inside a manual.

 

Thanks man. I needed a second opinion on this. I guess I'll go over to the stealership in the next few days and see what they say. I'd like to fix it myself if its easy enough and doesn't cost me hundreds of dollars in labor charges.

 

grinding going into gear is either a bad synchro or clutch going south, since it's just one gear expect to be rebuilding your trans in less than 10k miles.