Transmission Problem

[Jim Johnston]

A friend has been experiencing shifting problems he described as feeling like it was hung up between gears. Yesterday we removed the shift tower, and saw no abnormalities. Further investigation revealed that with the sliding gears in their neutral position the cluster cannot be rotated! We even tried turning it with a pry-bar with no success. If you put the sliding gear in to 1st gear and use the pry bar on the 1st - reverse slider you can make the cluster rotate, but it takes some effort. Likewise with the sliders in 2nd gear you can achieve cluster rotation by rocking the car back & forth, but again with considerable effort. The transmission has approx. 20K miles (stock engine, clutch, etc.). The owner is very diligent about keeping the transmission oil (600W) topped up. We are now going to remove the transmission, but was wondering if anyone has seen something similar and what they found. Forgot to mention that prior to this the transmission was not noisy. Thanks .

 

[rocket1]

you might have one sided sealed bearings installed in that trans,facing the wrong way,seized up on account of no lubrication

 

[Kurt in NJ]

Is the clutch pedal pushed down when you are trying to rotate the gears ---the sliding gears will only move when the driveshaft moves, the input gear and clusted will only move when the engine turns, or the clutch is disengauged

A hung between 1st, and 2nd is usually the "ball" on the shifter lever and the notches in the shifter fork wear, --it isn't fully coming out of first before the wear allows the lever to go into 2nd , the shifter rail interlock won't allow the 2-3 rail to move so it feels locked up ----when driving if you follow the pattern of the "H" instead of just pushing the lever toward 2nd coming out of first, make the effoet to put first into neutral, then across the H, then put in 2nd ----or fix the shifter ball and fork wear ---you don't have to remove the trans to fix this.