So, today, I was goofing around and hit redline in second, went to go pop it into third, and the shifter went in, but as I release the clutch, and gave it gas, the car did nothing.

Pushed in clutch, moved to neutral, and back into third, and it was fine. Hmm weird? Drove the car relatively normal, and 3rd played nicely. So during lunch, I went to try it again, redline second, went into third (no grinding, feels pretty smooth), and nothing. Put it in neutral again, back into third and car drives fine.

After that, I did a third gear pull, and went into fourth and everything is kosher. Just seems like the 2-3 change is where I"m having issues.

 

My car has been doing that for months now, false neutral where third should be. Shift to third slower, works for me.

Here's a third gear flat shift in .3 seconds, so it's still possible to shift stupid fast, but much faster than that and it's false neutral every time.

 

you likely bent a fork

 

I'll try shifting slower and report back.

Bent fork? The one for the shifter?

 

Shift fork...how gears are engaged. Internal.

 

See this thread

https://www.miataturbo.net/suspensio...-primer-90127/



This is a shift fork



You can see how it could bell out or bend, then it can't push the clutch hub back enough to engage third.

 

Same thing happened to my original trans, thusly it has a 6 speed now.

 

Same here after my second transmission doing the mysterious 3rd neutral, bought a 6 speeds and kept my 4.3 Torsen.. awesome combo

EDIT : I open it up to have a look and only the second gear fork was showing some wear.





Andrew at TSE reported of getting the same problem on some 5 speeds as well...