Also known as: m5af3, m5af2, m5cf1, m5cf2, hyundai 5-speed manual, kia 5-speed manual
Hyundai's five-speed manual transaxles — the M5AF and M5CF — in the Accent, Elantra, Getz and the Kias beside them.
⚑ The letters are the code and the digit is not a version. M is manual, the 5 is the ratio count, and the rest identifies the family and torque class — so an M5AF3 and an M5CF2 are not successive versions of one gearbox. Reading the trailing digit as a revision is the standing mistake with Hyundai's codes, and it is the same trap the A4AF automatics carry.
They are light, cable-shifted units built to a cost for small cars, and the linkage is the first suspect in nearly every complaint of a vague or baulky change. Check the cables and the gearbox mount before the synchronisers.
Their known weakness is the input shaft bearing on higher-mileage cars, heard as a rumble in neutral with the clutch up — which distinguishes it from a release bearing, the noise it is most often confused with.
The M6CF six-speeds that followed are a different family with their own page here.
Cars fitted with this gearbox
2 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.
Information, not instruction
CarGeek is a reference, not a service manual. Its pages are written from public sources and from what other people have found, never from a manufacturer's own service information, so they can be wrong or incomplete for your particular vehicle. Some of what they describe carries real risk: high voltage, fuel under pressure, stored energy, hot and moving parts.
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.
Community experience
Be the first to write this up
Nothing posted about this yet. Whatever you found is worth writing down — even a dead end saves someone the same afternoon.
What makes one worth reading:
- The car — make, model, year and engine. The same fault behaves differently on each.
- What you measured, not only what you replaced.
- What actually fixed it — or that nothing did, which is worth knowing too.
Sign in or create an account to add what you found about M5AF / M5CF.