Won't go into gear, even with trans out of car
 

Hey there.
I've got a 1995 FD and during some spirited driving, all of a sudden the car shifted out of 2nd and wouldn't shift into any other gears. No grinding, no reverse, no forcing it, nothing. It wouldn't go into gear with the engine turned off. I just pulled the transmission out and it still won't go into gear, so I know it's not the pilot bearing (that's new and fine), the throwout bearing (also new and fine), or a clutch issue: the transmission is out of the car.

I've searched a ton but only found issues where the transmission would go into gear when the motor was stopped, and always to do with clutch disengagement.

I'm guessing some bent shifter forks inside the transmission or something, but wanted to check the forums before I started taking it apart.

Stuck in neutral then, and the shifter won't move?

Yes, exactly, stuck in neutral. The shifter will go side to side a little (like, between 1st and 2nd, or between 5th and reverse), but not into any of the gears.

Possibly a broken shifter fork. Happened to me.

It's going to be inside the trans. Friend of mine had his transmission only going into a few gears (I think 3rd and 4th) but it was stuck from sitting for 20 years. Opened it up, hit the shift rods with WD-40 and moved things until it freed up and moves normally.

But, what has happened in your case is not a common problem, it's going to be something weird. Transmissions are kind of weird things, you can try and open things up but it's easy to turn a transmission into a pile of parts that won't go back together. If you do dig into it, take your time and take a ton of pictures. There are write-ups around on how to replace the 5th gear synchro, if you look at those you can see how the tail housing comes off, that may help and at least let you look at things.

You can always track down a good used transmission as well.

Dale

Great advice, thanks. I'll update the thread if I find anything interesting.

I had a similar problem from leaving the gearbox sitting for a year or two, the pictures may help (look at post #22)

https://www.rx7club.com/3rd-generati...ngage-1146337/

Hey, that's helpful, thanks.

After opening it up, I think my reverse synchro is pretty worn out and was preventing the slider from moving, similar to yours. I'm hoping to simply replace them, clean everything really well, and not have further problems.

For the record, my reverse synchro and gear slider were really burred and were binding up. This locked the forks from going into any other gears. I guess it was caused by repeatedly not letting the car come to a complete stop and giving it a moment before forcing it into reverse.