Thread: Transmission shifter feels too stiff

So my shifter feels too stiff, I have to forcefully push in the gears. Specially for 5th and reverse, the shifter feels kinda dampened. I thought it was the tranny but then I swapped in a B15 tranny and it feels exactly the same. Afterwards I opened the old tranny and it was intact.

Anybody experience this before? Any ideas what it could be?

1) I saw you say you're in PR, but says other states.

2) What kind of gear oil are you using

3) When it's REALLY cold out, and you use junky gear oil it can stiffen shifting until it warms up

I travel for extended periods of time around the states, but I live in and my cars are at Puerto Rico.

Ahh then its probably not that. Unless you had a recent cold snap, I don't see anyway why your gear oil would cause a problem. Do you use Lucas?

I use Valvoline, don't recall the exact number. But I use to have another oil on the B13 trans, so I don't think it's that.

I've had this happen once. What was it? I was running on two cylinders and dumping gasoline into the cat back when I had a catalytic converter on it still. The cat got glowing red hot, and turned the urethane shifter bushing into some gummy consistency. The shifter felt like it was going through molasses. (It recovered completely after cooling down.)
Not sure if this helps you any, but it would be worth to check the bushings and pivot points on your shift linkage for issues.

I would go with bushings as well. Could possibly be either the shifter bushing at the transmission and/or the rubber stabilizer bushing above the exhaust heat shields that the shifter bracket bolts to. The factory rubber stabilizer is horrible and you will see a dramatic improvement upgrading this to the CS solid stabilizer or the ES bracket meant for sway bars (can't remember the correct size off the top of my head).

Could also possibly be a bent shift linkage? Doesn't seem like it is anything directly related to the transmissions themselves since you have had this problem with 2 different trannys.