DoctorHarmful

Hey, I searched around in the forum for a bit for possible answers to my questions but nothing really matched, so here they are.

I have had a 2008 g37s 6mt with 76k kilometres on it for about 4 months so far. Newbie MT driver (this is my first manual..) and this is the first car that I've driven that I've purchased, so I'm pretty paranoid about things. Would greatly appreciate people with more experience giving me an opinion so I can sleep better at night lol.

For the record, I got the car at 73k and these are things that I've noticed have changed.

1) First gear feels really strange. I can get into gear without problem (unless I'm moving), it shudders a bit if I don't nail the clutch release (which I think is normal per forum posts), but recently I'm starting to think that something is off. Sometimes when I get in first, I get a really hard pull which will take me to 30/40km. Now it seems like its accelerating very slowly even though I have the pedal down until around 3500 rpm. I don't usually take it higher than that because it doesn't make the car go much faster. I usually get into first gear at around 1200 rpm. I thought this might be clutch slippage (new MT driver), but I did the clutch slip test with gears 4-6 and everything seems fine. All the other gears besides first pull really well. First gear just feels slower than usual and linear (???).

2) The first day I got the car I accidentally revved it to 9k~ in neutral and got a burning smell that took a few days to go away. Now every once in a while after some spirited driving (max out at 5.5k), I get a light burning smell in the cabin. Could this be related to question 1? Possible transmission/clutch burning?

3) VVEL tick/Rattling Exhaust - These have multiple other posts in the forum, but just to make sure, the engine consistently ticks, regardless of whether its cold or warm, and the exhaust sounds like there's grinding metal rattling around on a cold start (goes away when warm). I noticed when I got the car, there would be a rough start (loud/cough-like sound), but no rattling. I drove over a giant pothole at night once and heard metal on gravel, could this be something loose in my exhaust? There's a definite scraping metal sound, different from the typical rough start, but it goes away after a while. Could this be something broken off? Exhaust leak? The ticking was also not notable 3000 km ago, but now is very apparent. I did a non-ester oil change so that might be it?

4) Gear 1-3 whine - At low RPM's there's a very noticeable spooling/metallic whining sound. It's lower pitched at low RPM's and gets higher pitched as the RPM's go up. It's pretty much inaudible past 40/50km but I think that might be the sound going past human hearing range/road noise drowning it out. I couldn't find anything on this. Synchro's going out? Transmission whine? Something spinning against something?

5) Shifter is going crazy. When I first got the car, it definitely vibrated, but it was consistent and even. Now the vibrations are much stronger (to the touch, still cant see shifter movement), and in addition to the vibrations, there's sometimes a very noticeable tapping feeling. It's like someone's flicking the shifter **** while your hand is on it. This is irregular and does not seem related to the vibrations. Could this also be a clutch thing?

6) This one might just be paranoia, but sometimes it feels like the car isn't as fast as it should be. Pedal is depressed in gears 2-5, revs go up, car goes faster but there's no pulling feeling. I can still easily hit the speed limit and I'm not being left behind in traffic, but sometimes there just seems to be less acceleration (butt dyno) compared to before. Leak in air intake?


Thanks for reading. As you can probably tell I'm not too experienced with cars but I want to get more experience with DIY on this thing.

Edit: If this is in the wrong section, please move it. Thanks.

SonicVQ

Wow, that is a lot of questions! Here is my simple answers:
(1) Shifting under 4,000 if good for fuel economy, but does not make power.When you want full power/acceleration floor the accelerator and shift at 7,000 RPM. Try it!
(2) If there is no check engine light or low oil pressure light, nothing was broken. Don't worry about it. The VQ engines are VERY tough!
(3) The VVEL system is typically a little loud when cold. Shoot a short video so we can hear it and help figure it out.
(4) Normal. The manual transmissions are built VERY strong, but that does make them whine a little.
(5)It might be normal, or a cylinder misfire. Do you hear any thing "when the shifter is being flicked?"
(6) See #1

Here is a good video to watch to prevent/stop any bad habits: