after fixing a coolant leak last week i took my car for a spin,everything works fine, i was happy once again with the fd. monday, i get home from work and figure i'd go
for a ride and the f*&^ing car won't go in reverse. just as i'm about to douse the car with about 5 gallons of gas and set it on fire, i figure i'll give it another try. so i push the car out of my garage and go for a drive, thinking maybe it's just cold, no dice. i know that 5th and reverse are usually the first synchros to go and i'll probably need a new tranny, but is there anything else that could be causing this?? thanx -garrett

time to park the car and fire up the snowmobile!!!!!

 

5th gear synchro is GONE...same thing happened to me when I mis-shifted 3rd/5th...you just have to be creative when parking

 

i've done a few of those 2nd to 5th's, can that mess up reverse too?

 

yeah, Reverse is an *** to lose. Die For MX lost his reverse sinchro a while ago. Took us a while to get it into 5th, but that came after a while. Reverse never came back if I remember, but I haven't asked him about it yet. He was gonna drop the tranny and take care of business but I don't know if he did or not. We did some rally driving around the yard to get it back out the driveway. Every once in a while, my reverse doesn't get it on the first try, but it hasn't gone out yet. My first gear is always a pain to get into. Needs a good amount of force to sink the stick into the corner. Don't know why, but its always been that way.
Good Luck
-Dave

 

I just went through what your talking about. When I bought my car the 5th gear syncro was grinding pretty bad. And then one day all of a sudden I lost reverse. I ended up buying a trans from a guy in Florida who gets j-spec parts. I got it with 18,000 miles on it. It was pretty cheap too, it was only like $800 with shipping to ND.

 

That's EXACTLY how you destroy the 5th/reverse synchro.

 

Mine is on the way to doing the same thing. Some colder mornings I can't get into reverse. If it shift into 1st and then into reverse works everytime tho.... for now... =(

Try that, at least you can move the car until you can get it fixed.

 

It happened to me at the track. I didn't have reverse after missing 3rd. I jammed it into 5th and the consequence was a low 1/8th of a mile time coupled with no reverse. One of my good friends, that was with me at the time, is a mechanic so I took it by his shop the next day. He said he had to take a big wrench (or some other device, I can't remember) and force it into reverse. That was after he took the **** and boot off. It has been working ever since. So before you go out and buy a new transmission, try that.

Garrett