Howdy everyone. I have a 75 914 I just purchased. Nice and fun little car. I have a problem downshifting into 2nd gear -i hear gears grind. Also, when I'm at a stop and go to put the car in 1st gear, it grinds also.

Any idea what the problem is? The clutch engages all the way down by the floor.

Thanks!

Hi and Welome.

The first thing you may want to do is refurbish your shift linkage. Her is good article to get you started.

914 Shifting Improvements

If it's not the linkage, then it may be something internal.

A clutch adjustment would be first on my list of things to check----

and

That was a good article. I was thinking the clutch adjustment as well. When I go into reverse the car start to go backwards without me releasing the clutch. Would this have anything to do with the gears grinding?

The only gears that grind are when I go;
nutral to reverse
nutral to 1st
downshifing from 3rd to 2nd

This is my 3rd 914. I've unfortunatly have had a bad experience with these cars. My first one was totalled in an accident at around 60mph. I t-boned a dodge neon that cut me off (insurance actually gave $4500 after fighting with them for a few months). I walked away from that. These cars are strong!

My second one I bought was stolen and stripped. I figure number 3 will be the charm.

For some reason I just can't stay away from these 914's... I plan on doing a V8 conversion using the renegade kit -at some point! The 1.8 is just too slow -sorry...

Thanks again

If your clutch is not adjusted soon you will be looking at expensive repair s onthe internals. You should have the clutch adjusted so it engauges at the middle of the travel. When the cable is too loose the drive shaft always has prelaod on it and this makes the gears grind when shifting. The lower the gear the more the grind due to the larger differenc in ratios between the drive and the driven gear.

Time to break out the 7/16 wrench!

If you just got the car I would replace the clutch cable to begin with anyway, since it might be old and about to fray into 2 pieces- do the accel. cable while your in there too... Cheap $ for a lot of piece of mind. And as was said above, adjusting the clutch is the first and easiest thing to check which you'll have to do after installing the new cable.

BTW I like the yellow accents on your wheels- looks cool!

check your clutch tube!!

Thanks for all the feedback. I was under the car yesterday. I found that the clutch cable was pretty loose. I do have a new cable for it (came with the car) so I will install this week. I drained the engine oil and transmission oil -both kind of dirty.

What is a good engine oil to use in this car? I drive it hard and rev high. The odometer says 89,000 miles so i figure at least 189,000. Also, the transmission uses gear oil, not sure which weight gear oil to put back in.

Any other general maintenance I should be thinking about. The valves are nto chattering so I don't think it needs a valve adjustment, but I guess that wouldn't hurt either...

Thanks

try check this out

914 manuals in PDF

I use valvoline 20-50

Valvoline gear oil, non synthetic, weights and capacities in manuals

90w GL-5 gear oil will do ya just fine.

I think I probably need to adjust my clutch cable also, but the manuals are not too clear on this. Should the adjustment be done at the pedal or transmission end(looks like pedal end from what I can discern, but it just may be the free travel of the pedal you can adjust. I will look around a bit, but would like any help the experts can offer.

Hey Man,
You typically adjust at the tranny side. If you are out of thread then you may need to replace teh cable as it is streatched out. The adjuster at the pedal end will only adjust a little. Righ the clutch pedal so that the pedal is being pulled outward and cinch the adjusting nut down on the tranny end. No ttoo far or it will engauge the clutch too soon and wear out your TO bearing.

I thought GL-5 would kill a trasmission like this?

Thanks Doc, looked it up and all is clear. Think I have some thread left, need to pick up a spare

What makes you think that? Did you do a search and find contrary information or are you just posting desention based on a "hunch"?

It doesnt HAVE to be GL-5, but it is not gonna hurt it. I use regular old dino gear oil in by box and have no problems.

I believe it is the GL 5 plus that is bad, has too much sulfur in it or something, makes yellow metal unhappy

*edit*
et voila, adjusted it about 2-3 mm and it is perfect