Whenever I put the car into 5th gear I'm rewarded with a high-pitched "buzzy" noise, and if I take my foot off the accelerator it will almost always slip out of 5th gear and into neutral, UNLESS I maintain pressure on the shifter.

This seems highly unusual for a model with only 78,000 miles of non-aggressive driving.

Any ideas? Any product recalls for this defect?

Thanks in advance for your responses!

 

From what I have read on other forums, it could be a couple of things. One is the shift fork could be bent a little. This is not always caused by aggressive driving. It can be caused by cruising with your hand on the shifter as it puts undo stress on the shift fork. These trannies are shared (internals) with the DSM tranny. It has been reported that the nut (like a 22mm or bigger) on the gear assembly can loosen over time and cause it to jump out of gear. Search a DSM forum or 3si.org/forum and you will find out how to fix it. Briefly, you would remove the pass. side tire and inner fender plastics. Remove the tranny cover (looks sorta like an old v8 timing chain cover) then tighten the big *** nut you see to 135lb ft or torque. Please look it up for more info, this is just what I recall from my memory.