So I'm sitting in my garage, car off, messing with my shifter because it's really sloppy. I take it off and check the bushings then put it back on. Then I go through the gears and between 4th and 5th it just stops. The only way it will move is to the right but it's pulling the shifter fork(?) to the right not pushing it to left. I can't get it to budge.

If I start the car and slowly let the clutch out it will creep forward like it's in first then start grinding. I'm guessing it's stuck between gears. I'm hoping I can just take it apart and unjam it without having to spend much money.

My question is where would it be stuck at? I had an n/a trans apart once but it's been a while. Should I be able to get to what I need to from the access panel on the bottom or do I need to pull the tail shaft and everything off?

Leave it to an rx-7 to break when it's not even running...

 

I had a similar thing happen with my Ranger. You might have pulled the shifter out and popped one of the shifting forks out of neutral. There are probably springloaded buttons on both sides of the shifter, these return the shifter to the center position when there's no force on it. They need to be aligned with the gap in the very center so that the shifter can move side to side. Without a lot of effort you should be able to pry the forks forward and back with a flat screwdriver. If this doesn't help I'm not sure what's wrong.

 

I really hope that's the problem because I've dropped FC transmissions more times then I can count and it never gets easier So I can do this right from the top where the shifter goes in? I'd go look at it but I'm in the middle of painting the inside of my car and the paints wet so I can't...

 

I looked at it. Doesn't seem to have any springs or anything. I don't see any in the blown up view in my manual either. I took a shitty video of what it's doing. I'll put it up in a few.

 

Shitty vid is shitty. Not to easy to hold a camera, flash light, and maneuver a screwdriver at the same time. You can kind of see what's going on. It's actually the left it moves to not the right, and it goes forward a little bit. The only spring I see is the one that locks the shifter in.

 

It almost seems like it's twisting more then it's actually moving. Maybe the end piece came off the rod?

 

Bahhh hahahaha

 

I've heard of this happening to NA transmissions, but not TII. Either way, on any manual transmission there is one rod that is actuated by the shifter that moves forward and backwards, and makes a twisting motion as well. On the non-shifter end, it has a "foot". That little foot will position one of 3 other rods, either forwards or backwards. It sounds like you've somehow figured out how to put the car in one gear, then popped the foot out of its spot, then attempt to select another gear. This can happen, and it makes disassembly a son of a bitch. Unfortunately for you, it's time to pull that transmission and start taking stuff apart. I've never taken apart the TII one, but it seems somewhat similar when looking at the FSM.

Take out the shifter and pull transmission
remove the side cover plate on the extension housing
remove the spring and tap out the roll pin
remove the extension housing
see if you can finagle it out of 2 gears

 

sloppy shifters are almost always caused by bad or missing bushings. mazda parts fisches only show one bushing but there are supposed to be TWO(one on top and one on bottom, sandwiching the pivot ball with a wave spring on the top bushing to put the proper amount of preload on the shifter).

as Agreen mentioned, running with a sloppy shifter mechanism can cause you to select incorrect gears and jam into a second. usually this isn't a TII transmission issue though.

 

Thanks Agreen. You pretty much confirmed what I was thinking. I had an NA one apart a while ago so I have a decent idea how to take it apart.

Karack, yeah I know about the 2 bushings and the spring. I replaced them in my old NA trans. They seemed to be good in the TII. That's the least of my worries now though. Thanks for the input.

 

Finally got a chance to pull it out today. Took the tail housing off and the shift rod things wouldn't budge. I took the access panel off the bottom and could see the shift rods going to the forks. I spun the ouput shaft around as I used a screw driver to lightly push up and down on the rods. Didn't think I did anything but then I went back to the of the shift rods and put the conecting rod in and pushed down and it broke free pretty easily. Checked all the rods and they moved up and down fine. Got the tranny put back together and I'm gonna trow it back in the car tomorrow. Super pumped I don't have to buy a tranny. Thanks for all the help guys!

 

ya it sounds like your transmission is engaged in first and third if you take a video it might help a lot more. I just tore apart my s5 t2 tranny to inspect the gears and synro's and mine got stuck like that too. I had to take out all the gears and shift forks to do mine. Hopefully nothing grinded bad enough on the gears.

 

I dont even like to LOOK at trannies... they gross me out!

 

I love me a dirty tranny. My friend blew one last week.

 

Please read the post above yours