Cold trans fluid is like thick pancake syrup / warm jello. It takes more effort to wipe it off the synchro surfaces than warm fluid does. Also, sometimes, depending on the design, there might be a rail sliding into a pocket in the trans case as part of the shift motion and the pocket fills with fluid when driving in other gears and the rail has to squeeze it out of there when you first shift into that year. It might just feel like hydraulic drag with warm fluid, but feels worse with cold fluid.Teamwork wrote:I know I've talked about this somewhere, at sometime on these forums but as winter is around the corner my cars been weird with 3rd gear in an under 40 F environment. It seems pretty random to me though the common trend seems to happen at a higher rate when the car is just started but it'll take a "wiggle" to get through a notchy 3rd gate but then I'll restart and get in smooth as butter. I can't think of any reason behind this and usually just more effort is required but again seems to be a common nature of this transmission in the winter... I was wondering if there is anything that could really be the perpetrator here or worth trying to try and get rid of this/minimize. It's literally only 3rd too whether I'm downshifting from 4th or up shifting from 2nd.
Anyway, whatever it is, eye wooden worry about it.