So I was entering the freeway and everything was fine until I went into 5th gear. I was already in gear and started accelerating for a few seconds when all of a sudden I just see my rpm shoot up. I was freaked for a second until I realized that for some odd my shifter got kicked out of 5th and back into neutral. Has this happened to anyone else and know why it happened? I know it was fully engaged so no clue what happened and my transmission is fine.

 

bent shift linkage, my guess.

 

did it jerk at all sometimes the lash in the gears will do that or its a weak syncro

 

It might also be a bad shifter bushing not allowing the shifter to travel far enough forward, which would mean the gear was never fully engaged.

 

My shifter bushings are new so it's definitely not that. Basically I shifted into 5th and was accelerating so I know it was engaged, then all of a sudden just my rpm guage started rising quickly and that's when I checked and realized it was no longer in gear. I thought my tranny had just died on me or something so I tried to test if it would go into 5th again and everything was just normal again. How would I go about inspecting the shift linkage?

 

there is no Real shift Linkage per say.The shifter is Set up on the tail stock and screwed on to the Trans.
I just think that you didn't engage the stick into 5th hard enough and it Popped out and went into a neutral spot.
NOW if it Popped right out when you hit the gas,then that would be a different Thing.

 

You can only inspect the shift rods if you remove the tail housing. That means removing the shifter, disconnecting all wiring, removing the crossmember, removing the driveshaft & then finally unbolting the housing. But really, the shift rods and the selector arm are made from very thick steel rod (~1/2 - 3/4"). It would take a hell of a lot of force to bend them, and then you would probably hear some grinding when selecting up to 4 gears (2 per rod) if it was a rod. A bent rod would likely cause the corresponding shift fork to scrape against the one next to it, so in this case, it'd probably be 3rd, 4th, 5th, Rev. You'd probably have it bind up a bit as it was forced into gear, as well.

I attached an image from the FSM that shows a little bit, but it doesn't show the selector arm or "control arm" that physically connects to the shifter.

 

Well, I guess as long as it doesn't happen again I'll leave it be until I change my clutch. Thanks for the info. Hope it doesn't happen again.