5spd hard to shift

[hatched91]

my 1990 535i has a manual trans and a short shift. to shift the transmission it's not effortless. it takes some muscle. i drove a 91 325 with a manual and it was much easier. my friend owns a 97 540i v8/6spd with a short shift and his is about as hard as mine is to shift. is there a problem or is it just difficult to shift because of the short throw and transmission itself?

[nizmainiac]

iv'e driven various cars with short shifters in them from road cars to saloon stock cars and they're all pretty much chunky to change gear

[brosher]

You have less leverage due to the shorter throw. You have to make up for the loss of leverage with more muscles.


A lever is a simple machine that magnifies force. Levers are comprised of a rigid bar (lever arm) a pivot point (fulcrum), a load force, and an effort force. The effort force creates a torque around the fulcrum. The magnitude of this torque is dependant on the magnitude of the force and its distance from the fulcrum. This torque must be balanced by the torque created by the load force. Changing he distance from the fulcrum to the load force changes the amount of force magnification.

[Jeff N.]

You have less leverage due to the shorter throw. You have to make up for the loss of leverage with more muscles.


Too short and it get's chunky. I have the Z8 arm and it's just about right.

[bfd]

my 1990 535i has a manual trans and a short shift. to shift the transmission it's not effortless. it takes some muscle. i drove a 91 325 with a manual and it was much easier. my friend owns a 97 540i v8/6spd with a short shift and his is about as hard as mine is to shift. is there a problem or is it just difficult to shift because of the short throw and transmission itself?

You don't say, but what kind of transmission fluid are you using? You may want to try Redline MTL or Royal Purple, both seem to smooth out the shifting, at least with a stock shifter.

[hatched91]

yeah i figured i'd change the tranny fluid then see what happens. i know that there is less leverage because of the short shift, but it just seemed rather difficult to shift, much MUCH harder than a friends honda that has a short shifter in it, that is even cut down, so that's like zero leverage. but i guess it's a cheapo honda instead of a bmw.

[BillionPa]

there are also some bushings in the shifter linkage that wear down and make it hard, or there could be an alignment issue....

or like on my friends 3000GT, the clutch cylinder or some crap was out of alignment so even with the pedal full down there was still very light clutch engagement and it was hard to shift.

[hatched91]

well i bought the car and it had a leaky slave cylinder, but like a dope i replaced the master cylinder. of course, it was the slave going out, so i replaced that too. the car seemed to be hard to shift to begin with. the clutch might not be bled all the way out..but that's a high doubt. i was just trying to figure out what other e34 5spds were like shifting, especially ones with short throw's.