my brothers got a 00 civic ex with an obd1 jdm b16a and tranny. when I did the swap I replaced the shift linkage with 00 civic si linkage as well as all the bushings and bolts and everything that goes along with the shifter.
now a couple months later it's having a problem going into gear. almost all the gears are really hard to go in to but 3rd is especially hard. I saw some leakage from the clutch master so I replaced that as well as the slave. still no difference. no grinding or anything when changing gears, it just doesn't want to go in and then when it finally does after standing on the damn shifter it just pops right in. any ideas what's wrong with it?

 

After replacing the clutch master and slave, bleeding, visually confirming the slave throw , changing out the tranny fluid to pennzoil synchromesh, I came to conclusion that there was a problem with the motor mounts. I noticed the shifting action was pretty smooth, if you were continuously accelerating, but when you were coasting in traffic, or going around a corner in neutral, it would be hard to get into second or third. I noticed also I had got into habit of actually revving the engine up slightly when taking the car out of first. I also noticed a bit , not totally excessive, but seemingly more than usual movement, when watching the rear motor motor mount and revving the engine.

The final kicker for me was the resistance trying to move the shifter over toward 5th/R. Not trying to put it into 5, but just moving it to the right. The resistance would change quite a bit depending on how the car was sitting,and finally, if you revved it up you'd notice it got easier to move the shifter to the right.

After changing ALL FIVE MOUNTS, shifting seems improved. It's kinda subtle sometimes, but when i think back... I realize, hey. Now I can actually shift into when I want to instead of having to lurch the car forward

YMMV

 

are the gears aligned properly?

 

what do you mean? how would I check?

 

no one?

 

either mounts are bad, linkage bent/ binding on somthing, clutch itse;f is going bad, or the gears are shot.

 

syncros