whats up fellas? im new to the forum as well as mazdas. i recently picked up an automatic 96 LX, from a friend, for a couple hundred bucks. they got a new car and the LX was just taking up space. it has 123k on it. it had a CEL because #2 was missfiring, but all that it really needed was a good tune up. i changed out the distributor cap & rotor, the spark plugs & wires, air filter, & also gave it an oil change. all is good now, except that the car shifts hard out of 1st into 2nd (it was doing this before i bought it). my pop's was a mechanic for many years (had a tranny shop in the 80s - early 90s) he said that he dosnt think that the tranny is bad. he said, back in the day, you were able to adjust trannys that were doing the same thing the LX is doing. but he dosnt know about these cars & told me to go online for info. so here i am, trying to find out what i can from you guys. ohh, i also feel it shift just a tad hard when going from 2nd into 3rd, but no where close to that of 1st into 2nd. any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks fellas -tony

 

These cars are notorious for unusual hard shifts compared to other cars. I have had a 96 ES with a 1.8l and the old mazda 323 tranny for since new. When I bought it I brought it back to the dealer almost monthly for them to check it, it always checked out fine. Even got a factory tech from MazdaUS to checkit out. He told me they put a solution in at the factory to make them shift somewhat smoother. The dealer swore that they would stand by it if it broke. They did tell me to do a flush and fluid change every year, which should be done with any car. The ending is that the car is going on 12 years old and 180,000 miles on the same tranny. Do a deep flush on the fluid.....