Floated the valves. I missed a shift and now my engine is totally fuct. Power is GONE. A miata could probably beat me now.

Instead of 3-4, yep you guessed it.... 3-2. Redlined 3rd, selected 2nd by mistake and dropped the clutch. Completely pegged the tach. The sad thing is i've missed that same shift twice before and I was already aware of how easy it is to do. Both previous times I caught it soon enough before it passed redline by 200rpm... not so lucky this time. The gates are so damn vague on that shift it's not even funny.

It was my fault, I know. I wasn't paying enough attention. I was a bit distracted and I was still holding the shifter like I do when I granny shift, instead of overhanding it. Our gearboxes and trannys are trash if you ask me. My 2nd and 3rd gear synchros have been jacked up ever since the car was brand new. I'm debating on what to do.

What do you guys say? Telephone pole? Sell it? How much do you think a valve job would be? Nissan surely won't accept responsiblity for my missed shift (as a result of their **** poor design).

I'm really upset.

 

I would try the dealer...Cant hurt . Dont tell them you were driving it hard and dont tell them about the miss shift

 

that really sucks man, im sure the valve job would be pretty expensive, but I dont see any alternative for you.

 

thats the route I would take. Just take it to the dealer and play dumb, maybe it will be covered

 

Happened to me twice in one day. Never before, never again. Exact same thing, except my engine did not get hurt (I was not that close to redline), I would know.

Shifted to 3rd, accelerated, pushed to 4th, released clutch, and... *chirp* and I immediately pushed the clutch in split second after that. I went into 2nd! Ouch!

This happened to me only on short shifter I have (rogue, but I don't think it matters), since it makes gears harder to get into, and you have to push, you can easily wind up in wrong gear not knowing...

All in all, now I'm very careful on 3-4 shift and I advise you all to make sure you're letting the shifter into right gate. In my case, I had to re-think my shifting strategy.

My 2 cents.

 

I did it on the dragstrip, saw somewhere well over 8000 rpms, but fortunately didn't damage anything.

 

wow, what car was this on? i thought you were talking about your z but the rev limiter would stop you from hitting 8k, even with a TS reflash you could only bounce off the rev limiter at 7k! 8k is pretty severe to almost any production engine!! was it a bike?


-justin

 

the rev limiter doesnt help if you downshift into a wrong gear.

if you're at the top of 3rd gear and shift into 2nd instead of 4th and release the clutch you're going to rev your motor in the 11-12k range.

 

oh damn, sorry 2003z, i thought the rev limiter would stop the car from over revving if you downshifted as well, makes sense that it wouldnt as the engine would be spinning those rpms in that gear at that speed anyways. they should make a "lock out" that eliminates you from downshifting into a particular gear at a certain speed!....... i have been fortunate enough not to hit 2nd instead of fourth!!

-justin

 

Has anybody considered making a visible gate guide plate similar to that of Lamborghinis. It would cost some money to make, but ultimately be much cheaper than motor work due to missed shifts. Just a thought.

 

Reading this thread, I had the exact same idea (one of the shinny ones).

 

man that sucks... i feel for you... i've only done that once (fortunately at granny rpms - shifted out of 3rd @ 3500 rpms and hit 5000 or so in 2nd) but ever since then i've shifted into forth by put my hand over the top of the shifter and pulling down

the factory synchros try their best to prevent you from misshifting by making the gate harder to get into but during spirited driving (racing) it's not something one notices

anyway good luck man... definitely try the dealer first like others have mentioned above

(BTW at least we don't have an RSX transmission... smooth as butter when driven correctly but i'm told misshifting from 3rd to 2nd is VERY common due to an even softer gate feel... actually there's a vid floating around on the net of a guy doing just that, if i find it i'll post a link... there was also a thread a few months back of a guy who did that too and ended up with trail of engine pieces on the highway)

 

try shifting right next time, not that hard, unless your 17 than you are forgivien

 

found the vid:

http://rsx.clubrsx.com/videos/RSX-S_misshift.mpeg

 

Yeah, thanks guys. I'm most likely going to do that, and take it to the dealer. At this point I don't have anything to lose. I'll play dumb and tell them "it seems like it lost a lot of power for some reason", I just don't think that's going to work once they figure out what happened. I mean... floating the valves in an engine with only 9000 miles.... sounds a little too fishy. I guess if they tell me what it took to cause that kind of damage and refuse to fix it, I will admit I missed a shift and blame the design of the gearbox in an attempt to get them to split the cost with me, or something. This is going to get ugly I know it. Not to mention I was already planning on having a tranny swap. Not only do I need a new tranny, I need my engine rebuilt now.

IT DOESNT GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS, FOLKS!

I guess I could live with the faulty synchros as long as the power is restored. Isn't it ironic that the synchros won't allow me to shift into second gear under hard acceleration with anything short of a granny shift, but yet it let's me in just fine coming from 3rd redlined? That's almost comical.

What about the computer? Does it log events such as exceeding redline... hitting the speed limiter.... things like that? Like a little black box? If so I'm definately screwed. I have taken good car of my car, but I've definately driven the **** out of it. I guess now I can say that for real, literally.

It's been so long since I've had a car that's needed a valve job. I had an old alfa romeo that toasted an exhaust valve once... and that was a pretty penny to get fixed. I can't remember exactly but I remember it being over a grand to have fixed. Although, since it was an italian car, it was costly to fix anything which is why I eventually got rid of it.

Anyone have an idea what a valve job for the Z would cost? Let me guess... I'm the first dumb@$$ that gets to find out the hard way? Surely not?

 

bsr, I knew at least one idiot like yourself would show up with some nonsense. I was probably driving sportscars when you were still soiling your diapers, so don't give me that teenager crap. I've driven enough sportscars to know what I'm doing, not to mention I could most likely school you on advanced driving techniques(like floating valves, ha ha right?). You probably don't feel so superior now that you know you're talking to a professional driver, huh? How about taking your smart@ss comments elsewhere? I'm obviously not in the mood to be screwed with.

I was happily surprised to see so many responses from cool people who weren't giving me any crap at all, because I expected more flack. Of course all good things come to an end. (like a strong engine? ha ha right?)

Anyway... Sorry for the rant. I really appreciate everyone else not being as retarded as this gem. For the remainder of this thread, if anyone else wants to criticize me or my driving, at least attempt to do so constructively. I'm not an idiot or a newb driver. Thanks!

 

I have a mechanic as a neighbor who works on Subarus and he said unless the CES light came on then no, the ECU would not record what was the last state of your engine. However, since he has seen his share of WRX/STI coming into his shop for engine/tranny repair he knows when someone has put their cars through the paces. It became so bad that before Subaru covered any warranty work, they had to ship the engine or tranny to Subaru and have their engineers look at it. If it was found the it was due to manufacture's error Subaru paid for the freight and honored the warranty. However, if it was found to be due to the owner's abuse, the owner was stuck for the whole bill including the freight of shipping the engine/tranny.

I think once they have the engine apart that unless they are incompentent, They will know what happened.

 

take it to dealer, play dumb, some ECUs record stuff let your battery sit un plugged over night.

 

i think it's pretty difficult to misshift from 4th to 2nd, our gear box is not really that close together. granted it was a mistake, a costly mistake, and i feel bad for you ... but it boils down to driver error and not a poor design.

 

That's exactly what I'm thinking too. Maybe I should just be honest with them and maybe they would cut me a break. I also payed for the extra warranty, as stupid as that may have been. I mean, surely they know I didn't buy the car to drive it like a caddilac. If they give me flack I have an array of things to pull out of my @ss. For instance, I can quote the fact that they have revised their tranny more times than I would like to count, and if the tranny won't allow me to shift 1-2 under wide open throttle, yet it goes in like butter coming out of 3rd gear redlined, that *IS* a design flaw!

That makes sense about not logging unless throwing a light.. I think I might reset the ECU just to be safe, but who knows if that would actually do anything anyway.....

We must not have the same gearbox then. Sit in your car and shift back and forth... from 3rd to 2nd and 4th. It is very close, and it is extremely vague. An insanely slight deviation from a perfectly straight pull and you're in 2nd whether you like it or not. If it's not easy to do, why have so many people in this thread also done it?

I'm not sure when I will take it in, but it will be soon. I will let you guys know what happens.