Touchy Reverse Gear
Thread Starter
Burning Brakes
Joined: Jul 2013
Posts: 1,008
Likes: 57
From: Kensington MD
Touchy Reverse Gear
My 2004 has had a touchy reverse gear for a long time now. Basically, you can put it in reverse, but it pops out of gear. If you put it in gear and hold the shifter as you lift the clutch, there's a little click that you can feel as it locks into gear, otherwise it pops out again and grinds. IDK if you need to hold the shifter in place after the click, but I do it anyway. All the other gears behave as expected—put it in gear, it stays in gear.
Can this problem be easily solved, or is it just something ya just gotta live with?
Can this problem be easily solved, or is it just something ya just gotta live with?
Safety Car
Joined: Jan 2012
Posts: 3,956
Likes: 520
From: Da U.P.
Reverse sucks. Yours may be worn out, it's very common. There's also a shimming procedure, from the factory the syncro doesn't stroke all the way down to hold itself in gear. The cheap answer is just to live with it. Replacing reverse does not require a complete teardown, it's the first gear you get to once you remove the tail housing.
Safety Car
Joined: Jul 2010
Posts: 3,929
Likes: 386
From: Chandler AZ
I had this, and also same thing in first gear without pulling the drive train just pulled exhaust mid pipe and the metal panel that has lots of bolts, had to push shifter and hold or taking off it would pop out of gear.
Put in a Katech remote bleeder in car, no headers, bled clutch, changed T56 transmission fluid, it fixed my problems.
Had to break habit of holding gear in first.
However I do need to replace all the hydraulics and might as well replace clutch, since doing this in early 2019 I have had to fill the clutch master reservoir 2 times, but I’m lazy and probably wait until complete failure.
You could get lucky by doing a clutch bleed and change transmission fluid while in there, I was told by others here it was time for a T56 rebuild.
Putting in the Katech bleeder is possible without pulling transmission, but it’s not easy, the biggest issue I had on the whole job was bending and breaking bolts that go from exhaust manifolds to exhaust pipes, my experience is written on here but it’s unorganized, however it inspired one or two others to give it a try.
https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums/c5-tech/4217146-c5-remote-bleeder-is-katech-the-best-2.html
Put in a Katech remote bleeder in car, no headers, bled clutch, changed T56 transmission fluid, it fixed my problems.
Had to break habit of holding gear in first.
However I do need to replace all the hydraulics and might as well replace clutch, since doing this in early 2019 I have had to fill the clutch master reservoir 2 times, but I’m lazy and probably wait until complete failure.
You could get lucky by doing a clutch bleed and change transmission fluid while in there, I was told by others here it was time for a T56 rebuild.
Putting in the Katech bleeder is possible without pulling transmission, but it’s not easy, the biggest issue I had on the whole job was bending and breaking bolts that go from exhaust manifolds to exhaust pipes, my experience is written on here but it’s unorganized, however it inspired one or two others to give it a try.
https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums/c5-tech/4217146-c5-remote-bleeder-is-katech-the-best-2.html
Last edited by 1999corvettels1; Aug 2, 2022 at 04:26 PM.
Melting Slicks
Joined: Dec 2018
Posts: 2,641
Likes: 1,377
From: Orange County, CA
Mine did this and it got worse somewhat quickly. I had done everything @1999corvettels1 mentioned, and ultimately the fix was to rebuild the transmission.
While rebuilding the T56, I did a reverse gear engagement mod that should mitigate this issue from happening as badly as it did.
Basically you shave some thickness from one side of the reverse fork and add extra thickness to the opposite side. I posted up some details in my thread on this: https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...post1601856462
Also there are further details elsewhere:
https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...verse-fix.html
https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/tran...6-reverse.html
https://forum.miata.net/vb/archive/i.../t-256530.html
While rebuilding the T56, I did a reverse gear engagement mod that should mitigate this issue from happening as badly as it did.
Basically you shave some thickness from one side of the reverse fork and add extra thickness to the opposite side. I posted up some details in my thread on this: https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...post1601856462
Also there are further details elsewhere:
https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...verse-fix.html
https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/tran...6-reverse.html
https://forum.miata.net/vb/archive/i.../t-256530.html
Thread Starter
Burning Brakes
Joined: Jul 2013
Posts: 1,008
Likes: 57
From: Kensington MD
Yeah, I already have a remote bleeder, and it didn't seem to change the behavior. May have to look into MetalMan's links to see if what he did sounds doable for me. Thanks.
