5 or 6 speed box ?

[Toyless]

Looking at Euphonics and Sports as they have the LSD,which is the preferred gearbox ?

[MX-5 Lazza]

Personally I prefer the feel of the 5-speed but if you do any long trips, especially motorway driving then the longer legs of the 6-speed do make things more civilised.

[towelie]

MX-5 Lazza said:

Personally I prefer the feel of the 5-speed but if you do any long trips, especially motorway driving then the longer legs of the 6-speed do make things more civilised.

i thought 6th gear si about the same as a 5 speed if not lower and its the 1.8 diff that makes the final drive higher?

[MX-5 Lazza]

towelie said:

i thought 6th gear si about the same as a 5 speed if not lower and its the 1.8 diff that makes the final drive higher?

It is. Doesn't really matter though as the 6-speed cars always come with that dif. If the question was about fitting a new 'box to an existing car then the answer would be different but the fact is that a car with the 6-speed gearbox will have a longer top gear than a 5-speed.

[MX5guy]

I have a 6-speed on my car, and I know some of them can be a bit notchy when changing, and sometimes can be a little difficult to get into gear straight away. There doesn't seem to be any obvious way to fix this though, from the bit of reading around the net I have done. It's not a major problem, but it can spoil the drive a little if everything is flowing nicely, but during a gearchange then it needs a little wiggle to get it in right.

Also a common thing is sometimes reverse will not select straight away, you need to press the clutch twice (or drive forward a little). Not sure if this is normal on the 5-speed.

At 80kmph I'm around 2k rpm in 6th gear.

In the 6-speed you don't need to change the oil for the stick as it's splash fed (badly worded), whereas you do in the 5-speed.

Edited by MX5guy on Monday 16th May 09:37

[MX-5 Lazza]

5-speed can be very notchy between 1st & 2nd and noisy in 4th but otherwise they usually have a sweet gear-change and nice ratios. 6-speed is usually actually a better gear-change (apart from reverse) but a slightly looser box so not quite as accurate as 5-speed.

They can be improved by using a good quality synthetic gear oil (5 & 6 speed) and in the 5-speed by making sure the gear-boots are in good nick with oil in the gear turret. 6-speed doesn't have an oil-pool in the turret but new boots can help too and the lower boot keeps the gear oil clean as the turret is open to the gearbox.

[youngsyr]

Not sure if this is relevant to MX-5s, but on some other JDM cars of the same period you can tighten up the gear change feel by replacing the gear selector base mounts with alloy versions and swapping out the gear shifter cable bushes.

Anyone know if you can do similar things on the MX5?

Alloy base mount in position, oem removed on the right.


OEM shifter cable bush:


Alloy shifter cable bush:

[MX-5 Lazza]

That's only applicable when the gear stick doesn't go straight into the gearbox. There are no remote links/cables in the MX5 gear change.

[youngsyr]

Forgive my ignorance, I have little idea how the MX-5 gear change works - is the gearstick not mounted in an assembly that in turn is mounted to the transmission tunnel?

Or is the gearstick literally mounted in the gearbox?

[MX-5 Lazza]

Straight into the gearbox - well the end of the gearbox anyway. It directly controls the rods that move the gear selectors in the gearbox. There is only one replaceable link (without rebuilding the gearbox):

[snotrag]

youngsyr said:

Or is the gearstick literally mounted in the gearbox?

The gearbox is actually positioned next to your leg, not really under bonnet. The clutch would be roughly in line with where your feet/pedals are. The gear shifter itself is mounted directly to the box. It pops up through a hole in the tunnel, right next to your left hand.

The end of the propshaft is roughly in line with the ashtray/cointray thing on an MX5.

ETA - there is though a nylon 'cup' in the shifter that can wear, and replacing that at the same time as the boots can improve the shift.

[Richyvrlimited]

youngsyr said:

Forgive my ignorance, I have little idea how the MX-5 gear change works - is the gearstick not mounted in an assembly that in turn is mounted to the transmission tunnel?

Or is the gearstick literally mounted in the gearbox?

Gearstick is literally in the gearbox



That round hole on the right is where the lever goes, 95% of the gearbox is in the tunnel next to your legs.

I imagine the cars you're on about are FWD, the gearbox on those sits next to a wheel so you need cables etc to link the lever with the actual box.

[youngsyr]

Great, thanks for the pics and info - you really do learn a new thing everyday!

The two gearboxes that use selector cables that I was thinking of were both on 4WD cars with transverse mounted engines - I guess that is why the MX-5 set up is so different (and much simpler).