3rd gear grinds!

[A//// Guy]

Who knows if he even rebuilt the tranny? You have no proof and no receipt and no idea who the guy is... If you can shift into every gear except third something internally is wrong with the trans. Cables are fine if you can shift all gears except 3 and pedal height should be fine too. All gears would grind if it was the clutch.

[1slowdsm]

It's not that I can't shift into 3rd at all, I just can't downshift into 3rd :(. So no highway races for me for a while...ha haha. I'll drive around a little more and see if I can get past the problem without having to never downshift into 3rd. Does anyone know what could cause my car to be overheating? I just changed the thermostat and it's still past the the halfway mark.

[TheBlizzard]

Headgasket is going would be my guess. Talk a decent size drive and then see if you are pushing coolant into your overflow bottle. Either that or your fan/fans aren't working properly.

CRAIG

[Kracka]

Hows your radiator? Possibly your radiator has a lot of build-up inside it and with a FMIC (I'm assuming you have one?) its getting even less air.

[1slowdsm]

I dont think it would be my fans, since the temperature needle doesnt move down when the fans are running (I dont have a FMIC BTW). A coolant flush didnt help (using a machine from work) with the temperature also and the coolant didnt look really dirty. My guess was the head gasket also. I was blowing out very little white smoke from my exhaust when my car was running before it broke down. Now I havent gotten the chance to get on the throttle so I can't tell if I'm blowing more white smoke or not. Hmm...I'm going to need a timing belt and water pump replacement along with the headgasket change...wow...$$$!

[niterydr]

Hmm..usually they don't upshift, but downshift, my guess would be an abmormally worn slider, maybe the syncro as well, either way its confined to that one shaft is my guess. 4th gear works okay?
2nd?
About the overheating, have a leakdown test done, that will tell you if you have a headgasket problem. How many miles do you have on the water pump? When they fail, coolant doesn't 'disapear' it leaves a nice trail inside the timing belt cover and exits by the crank pully ;).
The factory heat gauge is a guestimate at best, make sure the mixture is consistant and there isn't any air bubbles. Also, which degree thermostat did you put in?
How are the wires around the t-stat housing?

[1slowdsm]

How are the wires around the t-stat housing?

What do you mean by that? I'll check for coolant leaks today after work. Or have QPR do a leaktest on it one of these days. I know I have an oil leak around the timing belt side, but if coolant was mixed with it, I wouldnt be able to tell. I go the 190 degree thermostat or somewhere around that and I've never changed the waterpump since I got it and that was at 76,000 (three years ago), now I'm at a little over 108,000.

It's weird, I just found out that if I downshift into second for a couple seconds then it'll shift into 3rd like normal, but if I go straight from 5th or 4th to 3rd it'll only grind.