sticky first gear - ae111 6spd.. help!

[chiksluvit]

Try reverse, cold & hot, and that will tell you whether it's disengaging completely or not & dragging enough to make it difficult to pull out of gear. Even if you don't use the clutch at all, you should be able to easily pull it out of gear when the rpm & road speed are matched.
The clutch as a problem would mean ALL gears equally or none.
I wouldn't bother with different oil unless there is going to be a major change, ancient to fresh, ATF to gear, thick(150+) to thin(70-), etc., not different brands.

I'd really guess at adjustment first, then worn/bent linkage.

Reverse is slightly crunchy when warm sometimes (this problem's been there since i had the car, just sort of got more obvious/frequent after the clutch change), while the problem also only occurs when car's warm. shifts smooth when car's cold though.
roughly at 2 out of 20 times of 1st to 2nd shifts i'd have the 1st gear sticking problem. 1 out of the 2 times when i have problems pulling out of first, it'd follow by a sticky 2nd gear when shifting to 3rd, not as hard to pull out as 1st though.
never crunches into any other forward gears.
i'm hoping its just a clutch adjustment thing... although the clutch pedal's already adjusted once by moving it up a little...

just out of curiousity, does anyone know if the reverse gear on the c160 box is synchro'ed?

On a side note about oil, I'll still change the oil back to castrol as redline in US has confirmed that lightweight shockproof should NOT be used in cars with synchro gears, it's too slippery and will cause synchro wear, so psychofox and merc-blue are right, thank you guys!
cheers

[chiksluvit]

So parked the car on the side of the street while i was having dinner tonight, for approx 1.5 hour.
after dinner, it happened again straight away as i left, so now i guess it also does it when car's cold...

anyway so i got home and thought i'd have a look at the brake master cylinder reservoir... althought i was told it was bled, here's what it looks like:

kinda like british racing green eh...





the fluid in the brake reservoir looks nice and blue... it was fully bled when i changed the brake lines, however I just double checked and found out when the clutch was getting changed the clutch fluid was only bled slightly.. so i guess maybe bit of fluid with blue dye was mixed with the original fluid that was in there maybe since the car was made 10 yrs ago that caused it to have this colour?

does that look healthy at all to anyone?

[chiksluvit]

Try reverse, cold & hot, and that will tell you whether it's disengaging completely or not & dragging enough to make it difficult to pull out of gear. Even if you don't use the clutch at all, you should be able to easily pull it out of gear when the rpm & road speed are matched.
The clutch as a problem would mean ALL gears equally or none.
I wouldn't bother with different oil unless there is going to be a major change, ancient to fresh, ATF to gear, thick(150+) to thin(70-), etc., not different brands.

I'd really guess at adjustment first, then worn/bent linkage.

when you said try reverse cold and hot what should i be expecting if it's a clutch engaging problem?

[allencr]

Noise & lever feel. Reverse isn't syncro'ed in any trans in the world AFAIK, so by the noise/grind/grinding & engagement feel you'd be able to tell if the clutch is completely disengaged & not still spinning at all, the clutch is slightly spinning & just needs a nudge to completely stop spinning by grinding once just a little then stops, the clutch has a slight amount of continuous drag & probably more when hot, grinds just a bit every time, or the clutch has serious continuous heavy drag & grinds a lot when engaging reverse and the lever feels stiff from the load & actually gives a pop when going back to neutral.

[chiksluvit]

Noise & lever feel. Reverse isn't syncro'ed in any trans in the world AFAIK, so by the noise/grind/grinding & engagement feel you'd be able to tell if the clutch is completely disengaged & not still spinning at all, the clutch is slightly spinning & just needs a nudge to completely stop spinning by grinding once just a little then stops, the clutch has a slight amount of continuous drag & probably more when hot, grinds just a bit every time, or the clutch has serious continuous heavy drag & grinds a lot when engaging reverse and the lever feels stiff from the load & actually gives a pop when going back to neutral.

Thank you allen
it actually does all three, most of the times it's smooth, sometimes it crunches a little, other times (the least often) it grinds quite badly and pops when going back to neutral...
will check the clutch adjustment again and sort the fluid out
cheers