Well late last night and I was pretty tired (around 1:30 AM) .. I was cruising back home in my SH and merged onto the freeway.. I had it in 3rd gear and was going about 50 MPH... I had to get ahead of a car to be able to merge so I floored it a bit and merged into the lane.. and my tach was at about 6500 or 7000 RPM's when I decided to shift into 4th when, for some insane reason I hit 2nd instead .. I heard the engine just start to rev like a **** and watched the tach shoot up.. this was only for a fraction of a second though since as soon as that happened I immediatly slammed the clutch in and put myself into 4th..

I was totally freaking out and pulled onto the shoulder and listened to my idle.. everything sounded and worked fine and my idle was normal at 700 RPM's so I just pulled out and accelerated normally and drove home without event..

My question is if you think I could have damaged anything with that misshift... I'm guessing the tach got up to around at least 8500 RPM's for that split second.. I didn't really look though just wanted to get out of 2nd as quickly as possible..

Thanks in advance for any help or insight on the matter..


[Modified by Modern Angel, 5:21 PM 8/6/2001]

 

i've done it too...unless you doing like 100 i think your safe. if your idle was off or your engine sounded wrong then i'd be worried. if you want to make sure do a compression test to check for bent valves.

 

yeah it sounds like nothing got hurt...you could do a compression test to make sure it is running within healthy specs if you want to.

 

Hrm.. well thanks for the tips guys.. I think it's fine but just thought I'd post this up in case anyone else had ever had a similar incident..

I actually think my tranny shifts smoother now than it did before.. heh.. anyway, from now on it's time to be extra careful with my shifts and pull off the 3-4 with my open hand resting over the shift **** and then a light but firm pull straight down so I don't get any of that "to the left" motion that put me into 2nd..

 

I had a buddy do that in his SI.. Blew his clutch out and tore a rod bearing up.. Also had a buddy do that in his ITR, blew the clutch and bent some valves.. I guess that is one advantage of having a weak stock clutch, it will give a little more..

 

a little trick i use is palm to the driver for 1-2...palm at the passenger for 3-4...since reverse has a lockout its pretty hard not to hit 4 with your hand twisted like that.

 

Don't worry ya just hit the rev limiter, Ya might wanna check on your fluid levels for your manual. that normally eats alot of it up.

 

The rev limiter just keeps you from reving past a givin RPM my killing fuel and/or ignition.. What he did by missing the shift caused the motor to rev freely past the revlimiter.. You know when your downshift your rpms go up, well, he did a downshift when he should have upshifted, therefor shooting the rpms in the 9k range at least.. The rev limiter cannot stop the car from reving in this case..

 

Don't worry too much. My friend has a Ac Snitzer Dinan BMW M3, while he was at SIR (Seattle Internationl Race-way) he did the same thing. No problems done. It does clean out engine very well.

Just to point out, the M3 is the sickest car I have ever seen, it has a PS2 with tons of games... His dad is a billionaire, hey I live in Bellevue, I just wish I was as rich as him!

 

I've done that a few times. All that happened to my car was that the belt tore just a little bit. Just don't do it alot

 

Posted by prelude 1897:

"I've done that a few times. All that happened to my car was that the belt tore just a little bit. Just don't do it alot"

Which belt? The timing belt I'm assuming.. not the alternator or AC belt or anything like that, eh? Good thing my 60K mile service is right around the corner..

 

I'm afraid it was, but it only ripped just a little bit of it off on the side. It wasn't too bad, but I was able to still drive with it. I was too lazy to change it, but now I have.

 

When you miss a downshift, and shift into the wrong gear you can spin bearings, bend valves (from valve float), burn up syncros in the tranny, etc.

However, if you misshifted and it is still running, and driving fine, then you got away with it. Probably becasue you caught it so fast, and because Hondas are built to last.

However, I am starting to get worried about the Lude tranny. I have seen ALOT of people with tranny problems. Whats up with this. Is there a TSB somewhere on this?

 

There are 3 TSB's on the '97 Preludes tranny.. - two for fifth gear grinding and one for incorrectly manufactured fifth gear shift forks ...

You can get all TSB's on the lude or for any car at this site:

http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/proble...ervicemmy1.cfm


[Modified by Modern Angel, 3:03 PM 8/9/2001]

 

thanks much Modern.

 

i was doing some gear runs-throughs for a video, and we have a video of me missing the 1-2 gearshift ( bad tranny, i SWEAR) and revving it waay past the numbers on the tach. Just by watching the video, it looks like maybe 9500 rpms . . . and everything is ok. very scary though!

i have a family friend that exploded his m-5 when he was trying to go from 5 to 4, and went to second. kaboom. . . .

 

sloaccord, your talking about banging off the rev limiter.. and yes, it looks very deceptive in a accord.. and it really won't hurt much of anything..

 

actually, i dont have a revlimiter. and doing 9500rpms on a stock valvetrain should've hurt something! lol.