Hello Everyone,

I've had my 06 Scion xA since June, and haven't had any issues with it until now. I have 9200 miles on the car at the present moment, and it has began to act quite differently.

When I downshift to 2nd gear from 3rd gear it makes a grinding sound, this only happens when the car is in motion. Has anyone else had similar problems? I have setup an appointment to drop my car off on Wednesday of this week coming up, but I'd like to have an idea of what's wrong with my vehicle before leaving it at the dealership unattended.

Thank you in advance for your advisement.

 

could be a bad synchronizer. if they determine that the transmission is faulty, they will probably replace it with a new transmission. unless the dealership can properly rebuild it, but i don't think they will do that.

 

That's what I was afraid of. Hopefully it can be corrected this week.

 

Sometimes under hard acceleration I can not get mines into 2nd to save my life, I have to double clutch it. No problems down shifting when engine braking.

Seems if I give the clutch a good fanning to knock the rust off the flywheeland pressure plate from the night before will prevent it.

 

I wonder if issues with synchronizers in our cars are common.. Anyone else experience something similar in their xA or Scion?

 

There are threads about shifting issues and how changing the fluid to synth, upgrading the shifter bushings and to the short throw shifter fixes them. I have mobile 1 in my tranny which helped a lot. THe short throw shifter helped the rest including reverse, but 2nd is still an issue.

I think the conclusing was 1, you can not slam shift it, 2nd the sync are weak as its an economy tranny from he echo and we are shifting for performance.

Ive shifted geo metros, large commercial trucks and a mercedes, this car is the one I have ever had issues with.

 

I have the same issue with my 2005 xA. Same problem used to happen with my 2002 Echo... If I try and shift quick under hard acceleration from 1st to 2nd, 10% of the time it won't fully engage and I end up grinding... Definitely an economy tranny issue in my opinion! Too bad there isn't a Richmond Six Speed that will drop right in...

 

I found that gettin metal shifter bushings helped solve the problem of getting the tranny into second. Those rubber shifter base bushing allowed for alot of extra play and when going from 1-2 or downshifing into 2 you'll wind up going past the point of where the shifter should be to properly engage second. After installing the metal base and cable bushings I've found it almost completely solved the problem. I don't really slam a gear but I do tend to shift pretty aggressivly, and I was able to be more aggressive with the 1-2 shift than stock since the fear of the shifter not coming straight down and getting hung up was now eliminated.