I orginally mentioned this here: https://www.rx8club.com/showpost.php...&postcount=258 but wanted to summarize here in case others are having similar issues.

last fall my 4th gear synchro starting going. It would grind pretty bad shifting into 4th gear at any RPM over 2,000. At that time I had about 26,000 miles on it. I changed the gear oil and that helped a little but after a month or two, it started getting worse again. Interstingly, it happened more as the operating temperature increased. Finally at 32,000 miles it got bad enough, and started grinding going into 5th and 2nd sometimes, I took it to my local dealer to see about getting it fixed/replaced under warranty.

they called Mazda, who told them first to check the gear oil level, which was fine because I had just replaced it 6,000 miles earlier. they then told the dealer to drop the tranny and open it up to check the enternals. As expected the 4th gear synchro was trashed and all the others were showing extensive wear. Mazda first told the dealer just to replace the 4th gear synchro but the dealer convinced them to replace the whole tranny. They never asked me to show any receipts for fluid changes even though the service intervals shows relacing the manual tranny fluid at 30,000 miles.

So, I got a whole tranny replced under the power train warranty. I had them replace the cluch, throwout bearing and pressure plate while they had it out. I thought about adding the mazdaspeed light weight flywheel but it just wasn't in the financial cards at this time.

It is a stock, 2008 40th A.E. with just normal highway and some spirited back curvy road driving. No track time at all.

The main item of note is that the car was originaly sold to an older couple. the old man bought it for his wife, neither of them knew how to drive a manual. It was sold originally by Bill Britt Mazda in Fredericksburg. They had to deliver it to the couple's home in Maryland because they couldn't drive it. I bought it used in 2010 from a Mercedes dealer in Pennsylvania. It only had 6,000 miles on it at 2 years old. The Mercedes salesman I bought it from said they had to send a driver out to their house to pick it up. The old couple tried to learn to drive it but gave up and let it sit in their garage until they decided to trade it in on a new Mercedes. When I took it in for the state inspection and to check everything out at Bill Britt when I bought it, the the service tech told me the original history because he was the one that delivered it to the old couple.

Now it drives excellent, very smooth gear shifts and all RPM's.

So far, everytime I have had to take it to Bill Britt in Fredericksburg, they have treated me right. (I have no financial relationship with them) However, I do my own oil changes and routine maintenance.

There you go...

 

nice. when i got my 8 2nd would grind a little and shortly after reverse was a pita. i got a new trans under warranty

 

I won't be so lucky lol. 5th gear is starting to grind when I down shift to it.. I had got it to stop after I put in some redline m90, but now 10k miles later it's starting to come back