Transmission Stuck in Gear!
 

This afternoon I was heading to the supermarket and put it in reverse to pull out the driveway. When I went to put it in first it was SOLID and stuck in reverse, I managed to pop it out of reverse after a lot of careful effort. It now is flimsy and wont take any gears at all and it will stall if I let off the clutch at all. WTF happened? I just put 1.7L of fluid in it less than 2 weeks ago. Could it be the pilot?

Sounds like the slave or master cylinders may be bad.

The same thing happened to my car years ago. Most likely the transmission is stuck in 2 gears at once, which completely locks up the transmission. The shifter linkage inside the tranny is just a small arm that pushes on a linkage that is connected to each gear's syncro. Somehow mine(and I'm guessing yours) has jumped out of where it should be and is now outside of the syncro linkages. It's hard to explain and I don't feel like drawing a picture, basically the shifter linkage sits in the middle with 6 other linkages surrounding it. The shift linkage pushes on one of the 6 linkages to select the gear.

This sounds very possible, can you post any links or point me in a direction in order for me to fully understand the issue and how to fix it? Did you fix yours or is it beyond repair at that point?

It's something that shouldn't be able to happen, but it does. It's fixable but not very easily with the tranny in the car. Lucky for you I have a junk tranny in my garage and I'm bored tonight :)

If you're lucky you might be able to jam it back in place, push the shifter hard to the left and bang it up and down a few times, it might pop back in. If not then you need to take out the shifter and the cover, 4 10mm bolts for the cover, top right of first pic. Underneath the cover there is one 10mm bolt that holds the block that connects the shifter to the linkage arm, take out the bolt but you cant remove the block yet. Remove the sensor seen on the top of the tranny in the first pic, it has a detente that make it hard to move the shift rod. Take out the 4 12mm bolts on top and remove the shifter housing. Now you can freely rotate the rod until you can get it back in position.

Or you can just pull off the tail housing like I did :)

http://i321.photobucket.com/albums/n...ldy13/tail.jpg
http://i321.photobucket.com/albums/n...dy13/tail2.jpg
http://i321.photobucket.com/albums/n...dy13/tail3.jpg
http://i321.photobucket.com/albums/n...dy13/tail4.jpg
http://i321.photobucket.com/albums/n...dy13/tail5.jpg
http://i321.photobucket.com/albums/n...dy13/tail6.jpg

pulling the tailshaft is the only proper way to fix this issue. often times, the gear selector rod wears or becomes gouged on the gear selector arms. you can removed the trans and have the issue fixed in one day. i can also post pics of wear points if need be.

Thanks for the input guys! Coldy13 you are a god among men! This needs to be in the FAQ page! Thank you!

I learned A LOT from this site when I first joined, just returning the favor and helping where I can. Mazdaverx713b is right, you should pull the tail housing and check the shifter arm and the syncro linkages for wear to make sure it doesn't happen again. When it happened to me I didn't see any excessive wear and just put the linkage back in place. Drove it for another 2 years before I broke the counter shaft power-shifting into 2nd gear, never had another problem with the shifter though :)

Well im using your advise and pictures to drop the trans tomorow, I was removing the boot asembly this afternoon and the furtherst left it will go is what seems to be mid 3-4th it wont go to 1-2nd or 5-reverse. it's solid where it is. :/

YEAH, coldy does a great job helping others. he's been there, done that.

FYI I've taken the tailhousing off, and when tapping on it with a deadblow hammer to get the tailhousing to come off the bellhousing and center section became un-sealed and lifted. So I had to take it apart down to it's major components in order to reseal it properly.

That makes me sound old, I'm only 24 :lol:

To get the tail housing off without separating the center section you want to use a hammer and chisel at the tail housing seam to break it loose, then gently pry it off with a screwdriver until you can slide it off by hand. If you do break the seal on the center section then you have to knock out the roll pins on the shifter linkages(3rd pic) and remove them. Then the center section is free to slide off the back, clean everything a use a thin coat of gray rtv to seal it back up.

LOL so lets just say the 5th/reverse syncro linkage is MIA, the cast iron snapped probably all the heat up and cool downs in the last month here in NS made it weak. Anywho I'm just replacing the tranny for good measure. Ive got a question about it. Theres a guy near me selling a 2nd Gen tranny, will it fit my GSL-SE they're both 13b's so it should be fine right?

Ouch.....The FC tranny will bolt right up to the engine, but there are other parts that need to be changed, the swap is very well documented so just search and you'll find more than enough info.

If there's nothing else wrong with the tranny you can just clean it out and I can send you the linkages out of my tranny.

I appreciate your generosity but I picked the tranny up today, hopefully someone else in need will get it. I decided to replace the whole tranny because the 5th and reverse were grinding a lot anyway and last time I changed the fluid there was a tablespoon or more worth of metal granules in the fluid. Thanks for all your help, I'll be sure to post up if I run into any snags and cant search a sufficient answer.

These trannies are pretty easy to go through. Just watch your parts closely.

This recently happened to me with my trans (i think) i needed to take the shifter out so i could drop the motor and tranny in at the same time. I ended up taking off the shifter housing instead of just the shifter and now shifting rod is jammed lol. gonna drop my trans during the week and figure this shit out