nrolfes1

I was driving my 93 FD and I heard a loud clap like something from the road flew up and hit my car. I kept driving. Parked at restaurant. Ate. Came out to drive away. Put it in reverse...wait, there is no reverse...and now come to think of it theres no 5th either. the stickshift can make the motions into 5th and reverse but its like the gears been taken clean out of the tranny. So I drive home in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, all seem to be working fine. i try and finnagle my way into 5th and end up getting it stuck in 5th gear and now i can't get it out! Let me tell you a start in 5th gear is hell on the clutch!

Anyway, i've gotten stuck in a gear before on my old datsun 310 and managed to get it out and ran the car another 30K miles without problem. I'm hoping this is that problem, however I realize it is probably a tranny rebuild.

Any chance anyone else had this problem. Searched the archives, most seem to address 5th gear synchro problems, which this is not.

RX4Man

sorry to say it bro, but i think u need to rebuild ur tranny. my friends tranny got stuck in second. let me tell u with a small block 350 making 450+ hp, his gas milege went from 5 to 6 miles per gallon to 3 to 4 miles per gallon. and he was driving alot slower then before. how many miles does ur car have? did the tranny slip at all when u heard the bang, or did u hear the rear end make a banging sound? when the bang happened did the tranny sorta gave out for a split second? if any of these things happened to u, then chances r that u need a tranny rebuild.

nrolfes1

just to provide an update, turned out what happened is i tore down the tranny to the gearbox (did not pull gears) and noticed that a roll pin had fallen out of the 5th gear control fork. i located the roll pin on the bottom of the box and banged it back in place and put everything back together and it worked. the actual repair procedure was elementary as i did not have to open up the gear4 box with a gear puller, etc. it was just a pia to pull the tranny out of the car.

Wargasm

Cool that you came back with an update...

Just FYI, not that this stuff probably matters...

1) The roll pins are not supposed to be reused since they lose some holding power each time you remove/install them. Was your transmission ever rebuilt? Perhaps had the 5th gear synchro fix done to it at some point before the failure? These things normally require several good blows with a hammer to remove them so I find it suspicious that it just fell out.

2) The roll pins are supposed to be installed in a specific direction also.