Dr. No

A couple of times when I've been downshifting from third to second, my shifter goes into the reverse gate.

It seems to happen when I'm downshifting into an aggressive hard right hand corner, so I'm sure I'm yanking sideways on the shifter to make sure I avoid 4th. Scares the bleep out of me and screws up the corner.

I'm trying to figure out if this is just bad technique by me or something wrong with my shifter too. Ideas on either score?

Geoffrey

How do you get the reverse gate when reverse is up to the left? Downshifting from 3rd to 2nd is down to the left

TwinDaddy

I believe Dr. No is referring to moving the shift lever all the way to the left, after which point it takes very little effort to move it the rest of the way into reverse. Otherwise he would be asking other questions, such as how do I pick up my transmission from the road. On my car that would be very difficult to do from third, and has never happened to me at all. I suspect it is not your driving technique but your shifter. However, it is not too difficult to unintentionally shift from neutral into reverse instead of first.

Geoffrey

The shifter normally resides in the 3/4 shift gate but will easily move left to the 1/2 gate or right to the 5/6 gate. However, there is a detent which you have to "push through" to get the shifter into the reverse gate. If you don't have this detent, then something is wrong.

Dr. No

That's it - moving to the left only, not left and up. I would have thought it should be harder physically to do this.

chris walrod

This happened to me yesterday on my first of three timed runs at an autocross (stop laughing Dave)-- I was shifting from 1st to second and it wouldnt go, after a second or so it dawned on me I was in the reverse gate, just the entrance, no grinding or lathe work, thankfully.

AOW162435

I wonder if any of this can be attributed to aging stock shift linkages. I've experienced very similar issues and have my entire shift mechanism apart at the moment for 'investigation'.

Andreas

Dr. No

It's a relief to me that this has happened to some good drivers here. I was almost too embarrassed to post this.

One thing I miss about my 914 is that straight shift from second to third and back.

autobonrun

I was going to post on a related topic when I saw this one. Yesterday, I ran an entire autocross in 2nd because I was afraid to go from 2nd to 1st. Reverse is just too darn close to 1st gear. The track setup was about 90% 2nd gear anyway, but there was about 10% where 1st would have been a better gear. I found 2nd to be a better overall selection given the placement of the turns but I must admit the fear of a quick shift into reverse helped me decide. It's not a problem when I'm going slow but during quick shifting at an autocross I find I sometimes go from 2nd to 3rd rather than first just trying to make sure it doesn't go into reverse. They should have put reverse down and to the right; 5th to 6th seems to be smoother with these trannys than 2nd to 1st. Or better yet, a button to push with some type of reverse lockout would give me more comfort.