hello i have a 96 pont. grand am and i am having problems with shifting i can get all forward gears most of the time but never reverse and sometimes it hangs up in fifth gear when you down shift. also what kind of oil should be in this trans. i think the prev. owner put in auto trans and i get diff. answers from local parts stores
If the previous owner put Auto Trans Oil in a manual transmission that will ruin it.
The owner’s manual should specify the oil weight, if you do not have one for your car, look up one for any manual trans. It will get you a lot closer than the auto trans oil which is of a lower viscosity.
The problem might be in the hydraulic clutch system. If the clutch master cylinder doesn’t produce enough hydraulic pressure to fully disengage the pressure plate from the the clutch disk/flywheel, the transmission input shaft will continue to rotate. This then makes it difficult to shift into any forward gears. And impossible to shift into reverse because the reverse gear is a straight cut gear with no sychronizer.
This transmission uses GM’s Synchromesh transmission fluid.
Tester
thank you , you have been the most help so far and i never gave the clutch a thought i will look into it and it sounds like it might be the prob. because it will grind going into third unless you let it idle down
thank you for your reply i dont belive that it is ruined yet i bought the car used and the guy before me i think put the trans fluid in it as an attempt to fix its problem but didn’t drive it much so i dont think any or much damage was done but i am changing it to the right oil if i can find out which one to use