Yaris Gearbox - What Does "notchy" Mean?

[dogdays]

Its back!!!! After nearly three weeks. My God, Toyota move quickly.

Toyota have stripped and rebuilt the gearbox with new synchro cones and various other bits. My wife picked the car up this afternoon,so I will take it out for a test run after having eaten my evening meal.

I best keep the Valium handy in case I become distressed with what I find.

Strange thing to have to do though to a car they said nothing was wrong with.

Dogdays

[Phatman]

My Yaris is very notchy, like scraping against bolt heads - metal against metal feeling, not nice. When changing from 1st to 2nd you can hear the synchros in the background. The car has done over a 100K miles so it's par for the course the gearbox is worn. Changing the gear oil for synthetic 75/90 did nothing but I haven't tried Redline MTL yet. The air temperature doesn't seem to make any difference. The gear lever is very noisy too, something I've never experienced in a car before, it clunks and clicks into gear. IMO the gearbox is the weak link on an otherwise excellent little car.

[dogdays]

My box is now working as well as the loan car did.Toyota are getting a bill for £1200 + from the garage.

Phatman

Which Yaris model do you have? Do you have clutch drag? Get Toyota to look at the gear shift cables as well.

ds

[Phatman]

I have an old 1.0 3dr. The clutch appears to operate as it should, occasionally there is a little judder on the way up if I don't gas the clutch enough when pulling away but that seems normal with small engines. If I move the gear lever real slowly I can feel the inner windings of the gear cables. If I could find a low mileage donor car I would swop parts over, especially the white plastic gear selector and the gearbox. One strange thing is that although the 3rd and 4th synchros 'sing' 2nd gear is silent which is usually the one that gets worn first The car is over 11 years old so I'm not complaining.

@dogdays I'm surprised they rebuilt your gearbox, individual parts are really expensive, would have been easier to just put a new box on especially when you factor in the labour.

[dogdays]

Phatman

All old Yaris have a bit of clutch shudder sometimes. I am surprised though that you can hear the synchro rings on your car as my old Yaris was silent. Are you 100% sure your clutch is not dragging a little?

Have you used the wrong oil when you changed it last or put additives in?

Toyota Technical(Europe)authorise an inspection of damaged parts and a report by the dealer before authorising remedial action. In my case they (the dealer) doubted that synchro would cause my notchy clunk, but seem to have fixed it by changing the cones plus other bits.

Pity you cant get the engine and box from my old 2002 low mileage 1300 Yaris SR from the scraper. It was immaculate till my wife hit a new Merc. Even then it still drove home. How I miss that car and all the cash spent replacing it.

ds

[Phatman]

Well, there's the right amount of play in the clutch pedal and the biting point distance is correct, not sure about the actual clutch springs? I put in synthetic GL5 75/90 which is what the handbook says. Basically I think my box is worn in the same way yours was. Unfortunately the 1.3 box has a higher final drive ratio than the 1.0 so I'd run out of steam on the hills, I'm wary of buying s/h gearboxes without trying them after what happend to my Golf GTI. I'm thinking of going for a semi automatic next, maybe a Colt.

[dogdays]

All the reports on semi-auto cars seem to say they are troublesome. I would tread with care if I were you.

[Paul E]

Just seen this thread and thought I would contribute my experiences. I have a 2009 1.33SR manual Yaris and I did not have any gear engagement problems, I did however have the clutch judder when moving off from cold that others have complained of. I happened to ask the service manager at my dealer about the gearchange problems and he said that in some cases they were caused by a clutch release bearing issue. There is a new design of clutch with a modified release bearing to address this issue. As my car was from the batch of cars which were subject to this issue, and was still under warranty, they offered to change my clutch for free.

Result is that my gearchange is as good as ever, but my clutch judder has gone.

Mention it in case it helps any others.

Paul