Aaaaarrrggghhhhh!! I love driving this car, but I HATE going through 1-2-3 gears!!!! I have only roughly 11400 miles on it and already the gears are feeling rough, only 1, 2, 3 though. It come and goes. There are days when it's smooth as butter getting into the gears, but other times it just feels rough and bumpy.

I've decided to post online because it has been happening more often these past weeks. And I think I shall bring this to the dealer before my Transmission warranty is over. What do you guys think is going on? Are my gears going? Maybe the synchros?

I recently drove a friends S2k, 4 years old, no mods or anything and man was it smooth like butter. i was actually thinking of getting the Axial Flow Short Shifter.

These rough gears really take the fun out of driving this car

 

Changing the gear oil might help although it should be OK still. Mazda reccommends a change at around 30K.

 

yeah i've thought about changing the oil, would this fall under warranty work though? Or would I have to pay for the actual service, since I've not yet hit the 30k mark.

 

It's service not a warranty repair. You would have to pay for the service at 30K, and you will have to pay for it if you do it now.

I changed mine out to Royal Purple at 50,000 miles (it should have been done much sooner than this as I was having a number of issues including cranky shifts, but I was relying on the dealer who was servicing the car at the time). With the oil replacement the transmission became much smoother to shift especially in cold weather. On the down side, the car smelled badly of gear oil after the change for a good six months. I must have gotten some somewhere, but it smelled pretty bad for a while.

Also, I can't say that this is positively your problem, but it is my best guess without looking at the car. My other thought is really unlikely, but it is possible that there is a problem with your clutch, clutch cylinders or pedal.

 

There is this clutch TSB that you might want to look at, but again I am leaning more to a gear oil change from the symptoms that you report, Best of luck.

http://www.finishlineperformance.com...4-06-1641a.pdf