Also known as: ar5, ar-5, aisin ar5, mg9, aisin az5
Aisin's five-speed manual for General Motors — in the Hummer H3, the Pontiac Solstice and the Saturn Sky.
It is not the AX-15 and it is not derived from the A340, both of which this catalogue briefly claimed. The AX-15 is Aisin's Jeep gearbox and the A340 family are automatics; the AR5 shares a manufacturer with them and nothing else. The confusion is easy to make because Aisin's naming gives no clue which is which.
It is a light-duty gearbox in vehicles that ask a lot of it. The H3 in particular is heavy and geared low, and the failure is the fifth-gear synchro and the shift fork — a grind into fifth alone, or fifth refusing to stay engaged under load. A gearbox that jumps out of one specific gear is a fork or a worn hub, not general wear, and that is repairable without touching the rest.
Shift quality complaints are usually the linkage. The lever bushings and the shifter's own base wear, producing a change that is long and imprecise and reads as a worn gearbox.
Cars fitted with this gearbox
3 generations. Only where a source names the model and the generation together — a gearbox is documented as a product far more often than as a fitment, so this list is deliberately shorter than the truth.
Hummer
Pontiac
Saturn
Information, not instruction
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Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
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