2nd gear binding under hard accel

Ever since I had my new clutch (FX100) and flywheel (dual mass) installed, I've been having trouble getting out of second gear if I wait to shift at say 6000+ rpm. Easy driving, shifting at lower rpm gives no trouble - it shifts great. When it gets "stuck in gear", I am forced to keep the clutch disenganged and wait for the engine speed to drop enough for me to get it out of gear (and engine speed does drop, it doesn't seem like the clutch is still partially engaged).

Clutch pedal is completely to the floor. Transmission fluid is fresh. Thought it might be worn transmission mounts so I swapped in a barely used set of UUC red poly mounts I had but no difference. No odd vibrations through the shifter as I might expect if the linkage were contacting the flex disc (also replaced at the same time as the clutch). I don't think it's an issue with the slave cylinder or air in the system since it is only an issue when shifting at high rpm.

Any thoughts as to what the problem might be? My only thoughts at this point are that there may be too much play in either the pilot or throwout bearing leading to misalignment of the input shaft. Luckily, parts and install are still under warranty but getting to the root of this problem may prove tricky.

That's really odd. Did you replace your shifter parts while it was apart? That significantly improved my shifting.

No but I didn't have any problems shifting prior to the new clutch.

Thats so strange. Wish I had some kind of input... Throwout bearing is probably where I'd look, if you're certain its not slave cylinder or line related...

i had the same problems flushed and put in new fluid in tranny fixed it right up =]

Originally Posted by spikester550

i had the same problems flushed and put in new fluid in tranny fixed it right up =]

Good to hear but that didn't help in my case.

Originally Posted by TxZHP04

Good to hear but that didn't help in my case.

You're just gonna have to give me your supercharger setup, that'll fix it

Originally Posted by AdamBath

You're just gonna have to give me your supercharger setup, that'll fix it

Heh, nice try.

You are Double Clutching right? ive heard of people who had the same problem but as soon as the double clutched no problem

Originally Posted by Blacke46bmws

You are Double Clutching right? ive heard of people who had the same problem but as soon as the double clutched no problem

You must have missed the part where I said it won't come out of gear. You can't double clutch if you're stuck in gear.

I have the same issue with 3rd gear and I was told that air in slave cylinder or worn slave cylinder flexi hose expanding cause such issues. Sometimes to completely bleed the slave cylinder you need to take it out and tap it with a rubber mallet to force air bubles to escape from bleed screw. Best of luck to figure out the problem

Who changed your clutch?? most cars you dont need to crank the line before removing the slave cylinder, but its almost been my practice after my first went out because i didnt. I called a bmw tech and they said on bmws you have a good chance of ruining the slave cylinder if not, so check that make sure it doesnt have small leaks. sometimes they wont leak but the lil rod deal either wont go as far as it use to or to far. have you removed your lil clutch delay valve also? remove that shit if you have not yet also

Originally Posted by paraklas

I have the same issue with 3rd gear and I was told that air in slave cylinder or worn slave cylinder flexi hose expanding cause such issues. Sometimes to completely bleed the slave cylinder you need to take it out and tap it with a rubber mallet to force air bubles to escape from bleed screw. Best of luck to figure out the problem

I had considered an air bubble and while certainly a possibility, it's probably one of the least likely issues. Hadn't considered the clutch line itself though. Given that I've got 90k miles on the car, I wonder if the increased resistance of the aftermarket pressure plate is causing the line to swell instead of disengaging the clutch. Not sure I can rationalize why this only becomes a problem above 6000 rpm and never in my normal day to day shifting though. Either way, might be a good excuse to upgrade from the stock clutch line.

Originally Posted by InDiGlOM3

Who changed your clutch?? most cars you dont need to crank the line before removing the slave cylinder, but its almost been my practice after my first went out because i didnt. I called a bmw tech and they said on bmws you have a good chance of ruining the slave cylinder if not, so check that make sure it doesnt have small leaks. sometimes they wont leak but the lil rod deal either wont go as far as it use to or to far.

As with my response to paraklas, not sure I see why a hydraulic problem would be rpm dependent.

Originally Posted by InDiGlOM3

have you removed your lil clutch delay valve also? remove that shit if you have not yet also

Yeah, you're about 5.5 years and 90k miles late with that advice. That was the first thing to get ripped out after I bought the car new.

I've run into the same problem. It all came down to the company that made the PP, had the fulcrum point in the wrong place. I found this out as I was so mad because they talked to me like I was an idiot, that I made up a jig and determined that they had screwed up the fulcrum point on the PP. I took a spare transmission and bolted it up to a spare motor. Then I started with the stock clutch assembly and measured the distance it took to release the clutch. From there, I put in this aftermarket unit. I found out that this aftermarket unit took 10mm of extra travel to get the clutch to release. That 10mm is beyond the travel of the slave cylinder. Maybe this isn't your problem but who knows.

Originally Posted by mrshelley

I've run into the same problem. It all came down to the company that made the PP, had the fulcrum point in the wrong place. I found this out as I was so mad because they talked to me like I was an idiot, that I made up a jig and determined that they had screwed up the fulcrum point on the PP. I took a spare transmission and bolted it up to a spare motor. Then I started with the stock clutch assembly and measured the distance it took to release the clutch. From there, I put in this aftermarket unit. I found out that this aftermarket unit took 10mm of extra travel to get the clutch to release. That 10mm is beyond the travel of the slave cylinder. Maybe this isn't your problem but who knows.

Certainly worth exploring since I'm dealing with an aftermarket clutch and especially since Clutchmasters had some in issues in providing the correct parts for my 6-spd. They initially sent a kit for a 5-spd as their catalog didn't reflect any 6-spd applications for '03 or '04 models. We got that corrected but then the PP had to be replaced again with another unit because the first 6-spd unit was horribly out of balance.

New symptom tonight - major grind shifting into 2nd, still under hard accel though. Seems it's definitely not disengaging fully for one reason or another.

Try this, put in a brand new stock clutch and PP and report back to what you found. As for me, once I stuck back in the stock unit, the shifting problem went away. So, I obviously didn't have this "mysterious" air in the clutch line. Again, this might not be your problem but it sure does bring back memories of two years ago for me.

Car is back in the shop to get this resolved. Interestingly, I learned that they used a stock throwout bearing when they put things back together after resolving the vibration problem. Reason was that the throwout bearing provided by ClutchMasters was "too long and preventing full engagement." Strangely, I never noticed any engagement issues with the CM provided TOB but now it won't fully disengage with the shorter stock TOB. Solution to my problem seems pretty cut and dry to me at this point.

The shop is taking care of all these issues under warranty but I think they're at the point where they want to cut their losses and move on. They've already mentioned being prepared to return it to stock if they don't find anything obvious once they've pulled the transmission. That wouldn't make me very happy as the whole reason I went aftermarket was to get away from the insanely frustrating stock SAC... and CM was their recommended clutch. I originally wanted to go SouthBend but they wouldn't warranty the installation of a product they didn't have any experience with. Of course, it doesn't seem that my problems at this point are related to the CM parts.

I paid to have this work done since it would be warrantied and because I didn't have the time to do it myself, much less deal with dropping the transmission 2 or 3 times to deal with these kind of problems (of course, I would have had the clutch and flywheel balanced before installing and would have used the parts from the clutch vendor and not the mix-n-match that appears to have occurred). Just goes to show, if your want something done right... gotta do it yourself.

I'm very frustrated at the moment. It's going to be interesting to see where things stand at the end of the day.

Where does one go to get a clutch/flywheel balanced? I might have to take mine off, wouldn't mind having this done.

...GL man. So I guess you're just going to try the CM tob?