Well, I am absolutely not a pro on this subject, but since I am a finance manager at a Nissan/Acura store, I have seen many tranny issues with 6-speeds.

Nissan offers a 6-speed Z and Sentra Spec-V, which I have heard has problems with second to third gear shifts because of the synchros, and we have replaced many under factory warranty. The gears would "crunch" in between those gears, and would never have a problem with any other gear. My old neighbor who does track his Orange Track Model Z at Summit Point all of the time has had 2 trannies put in so far in about 2 years.

Now with Acura, I have heard of some bent forks in the 6-speed TL, and definately some issues with the RSX Type S having the same kind of problems like Nissans. The 2nd to 3rd gear upshift and downshift are producing the same kind of "crunch".
Luckily, the manufacturer does replace them with basically no questions asked, and puts in new/refurb trannies in all of the time. Even the factory extended warranties cover these repairs without any real issues.

Now to my point, I am not an engineer or mechanic, but obviously there is a weak link in the apparent design of 6-speed trannies, and from just my experience and from talking to service, it is always the 2nd to 3rd gears. I guess I am writing this because from day one when I bought my 01 Turbo (with 5k miles) about 16 months ago, I have had the 2nd gear pop out. It only happens maybe twice a month, but I thought it was more driver error. I thought maybe I was not putting the car fully into second. It only happens on the descent of a hill, and when I do put it back into gear, I get a loud crunch of gears vs gears, like almost I didn't depress the clutch in at all. Well, the car is out of the 4 year warranty period, and I still have the issue, but I do have an extended service contract (from my work), and hopefully that will pick up the tab.

Another thing is that, I did the B&M shifter a while back, and actually the problem became alot less apparent, but still does have the 2nd gear pop-out, but just more infrequently. Thanks for any thoughts or comments.

 

its when u do really bad mis shifts n stuff is when the tranny starts skipping. u basically damage the syncros by badly misshifting and from then on your screwed

 

you might want to read some of the other threads on "2nd gear popping out".

 

Actually, I did read the past posts about the 2nd gear pop out, and that is why I wrote this. I did a search a while back about it, and could only find 1 post a long time ago. I guess I knew I had a problem, but didn't really think too much about it until now when I started to see someone else had the same problem.