I swapped a 60K mile T56 into my 97 last fall. It operated flawlessly and have been happy with it. Just he other night I had a friend who wanted race for fun so we went from a roll and ran WOT though 3rd gear. The tranny shifted well and nothing odd happened. When I started to slow down I down shifted into 3rd gear and it ground very badly. Thinking it was something I did with not pushing the clutch all the way in I tried it and still ground. It won't go into gear unless you really force it and does it on both up and down shifts.

It sounds like me that the syncros went out in 3rd. What causes this to happen so suddenly? There were no warning signs and the car never ground gears at all. Right now I can drive it by just going around 3rd gear but realize it needs to be fixed as I don't want to do any additional damage.

I wanted to have the tranny rebuilt in the future when I build my 355 to withstand more abuse but really don't want to drop that kind of money right now. Is if foolish to have the 3rd gear problem fixed without going though it and upgrading parts to hold more HP and abuse?

 

Sounds like your clutch isnt fully disengaging which is making your tranny grind the way it is.

 

When mine did that, the throwout bearing was found to be cracked in three places. That is AFTER I had my tranny rebuilt. Go with the cheapest first.

I was running in an HPDE event and missed a gear going for going from third and accidently hit second at and extremely high rate of speed and RPMs. I thougth I blew my engine. Everything was fine and no damage to the tranny.

 

I forgot to mention it is only 3rd gear that grinds, all other forward gears and reverse are fine, no grinding at all. Just 3rd.

 

Mine would grind ever so often sometimes in first other times in second. Sometimes it was so hard to shift in and out of gear I had to wait for the RPMs to drop before I could move the stick.

 

Mine has never ground before and now third is pretty violent as I am unable to even get it into 3rd. So does that mean the syncros are out on 3rd?