Welcome to the forum!
I had the grinding problem when shifting from 1st to 2nd with the stock fluid. It's a very noticeable event grinding gears. You'll feel it and hear it, it'll send shivers down your spine and cause you to apologize repeatedly to your car. The grinding only happened to me when I was "speed shifting" IE revving first gear out to 5,500+ rpms then slamming the shifter from first to second. I never had issues doing that in my Cobalt, but the Cruze was more sensitive. I changed to the Amsoil synchromesh fluid and it calmed down a lot. I've still managed to grind it a handful of times since switching. I think I'm going to replace it again this spring with the heavier duty Amsoil 75w-90 gear oil.
Other than that the Cruze has a very unique manual transmission that in my opinion takes some time to get used to with it's gearing and the way the clutch operates. But you should love the fuel economy that eco gets, there's not a lot of vehicles that can beat in the economy game.
I had the grinding problem when shifting from 1st to 2nd with the stock fluid. It's a very noticeable event grinding gears. You'll feel it and hear it, it'll send shivers down your spine and cause you to apologize repeatedly to your car. The grinding only happened to me when I was "speed shifting" IE revving first gear out to 5,500+ rpms then slamming the shifter from first to second. I never had issues doing that in my Cobalt, but the Cruze was more sensitive. I changed to the Amsoil synchromesh fluid and it calmed down a lot. I've still managed to grind it a handful of times since switching. I think I'm going to replace it again this spring with the heavier duty Amsoil 75w-90 gear oil.
Other than that the Cruze has a very unique manual transmission that in my opinion takes some time to get used to with it's gearing and the way the clutch operates. But you should love the fuel economy that eco gets, there's not a lot of vehicles that can beat in the economy game.
