Stiff Shift into 1st when cold

[TverRus69]

As its been getting colder i started noticing that its getting increasingly hard to shift into first. Is this fluid related? It gets normal again after it warms up after about 10 mins of city driving.

[Seerlah]

Normal. You will also notice that at times when shifting from 1st into 2nd that the gears will grind (as the weather gets colder). The gear oil needs to warm up a bit before you can have smoothe shifting. It gets better after the car warms up though. A good preparation can be to simply let the car warm up before driving off (~10min). A perk of winter.

[tdn]

Some transmission fluid is better than others when it comes to cold weather, even fresh fluid would help depending on how long what you have in there now has been there. I believe I have redline mt-9 or something like that in my car now, and the shifts arent bad at all. This morning was about 15 degrees Fahrenheit and it was harder to get into gear but easy enough that I didn't even give it a second thought. The stock fluid that was in there before was much worse last winter.

[Kronic Budz]

yea same thing for me, not even when its cold, just when the oil isnt warmed up yet. Its sometimes hard to get it into 1st and/or is sloppy and also going into 2nd as well. On occasion i will only get it in half way going into 2nd and really need to pull that shit back to make sure its gunna stay in 2nd.

But i have a lot of shifter play so that could have something to do with it.

[bob12312357]

Normal, every car I've owned was like this.

[fikes]

You want to really stop it. Get new trans fluid and a JHM shifter with linkage and it will be at least 50% easier when cold. Friend has both and that is my plans for the winter.

[Seerlah]

This was a topic talked about a while ago, and people switched transmission oils as recommended above. GM Synchromesh was the "New thing" when it came to the gears grinding. But there was a special blend (I can not recall) that our cars were able to accept. Do not use regular GM Synchromesh. But Redline is a def good choice for transmission oils. I think I may change mine to Amsoil in the near future.