Lost 5th gear!

[ibanix]

Was merging on the freeway today - WOT into 3rd, then 4th, then 5th... and on shifting up to 5th I instantly hit redline.

5th gear is no where to be found, attempts to shift into it act as if I was in neutral. All other gears work fine.

Now, when I got my clutch put in 15-20k mi back, shifting got a lot harder, required more arm strength to force the selector into place. I (wrongly?) assumed this was because the clutch is so much more beefy.

Anyways, now I'm not sure if the selector went entirely out of alignemnt for the 5th gear, or if I busted my 5th, or some other bad mojo.

Help!

 

[mrGutWrench]

(snip) Anyways, now I'm not sure if the selector went entirely out of alignemnt for the 5th gear, or if I busted my 5th, or some other bad mojo.
Help!

__. Iban, I had a similar problem. My car would go into 5th but if you gave it any power, it would pop out of 5th into neutral (it would cruise at 55 MPH on a level road most of the time but if you tried 60-65 or if you came to a hill, it would pop out quickly).

__. I went to a local (kinda) transmission guru and he showed me what was going on. It looks to me like this is a modified 4-speed transmission -- there are 4 speeds within the box itself and the 5th is added on extended main and lay shafts. The actual 5th gears sit outside the main gearbox housing, inside a little "blister" cover. This drawing shows the parts -- the "figure 8" housing is a bearing holder; everything to the right of that bearing holder is "outside the main gearbox shell" in the "blister".

__. On my box, the "tech" (that's a new spelling for "clown" BTW) that installed my .658 gears installed them wrong, melting the plastic cage for the needle bearings that carry the large 5th gear and the shifter "cluster". With the cage melted, the needles themselves were free to move around and they did. With the bearing out of line, the gears clashes chipping most of the teeth and actually breaking a few of them off.

__. There's a snap ring that holds the shifter cluster (which is a set of parts that includes the shifter slider, the synchronizer and other parts). It looked on mine like a piece of broken tooth had hit the outer snap ring -- that snap ring was fragged into many pieces on the bottom surface of the "blister".

__. Anyway, the damage done by the gears being out of line (or maybe by the snap ring being gone) also chipped and wore grooves in the shifter cluster -- which is about a $400 part. There's some chance that your problem is just a snap ring being loose and replacing/reseating the snap ring would fix it but (if I had to guess) I'd guess that your shifter cluster got damaged, too.

 

[hevster1]

The first thing I would do is adjust the cables/shifter properly. If there is still no 5th then you must remove the outer case and do an exploratory.

 

[TdiRacing]

Pull the cover and look in there right away to see what went wrong. Easy to spot usually.

 

[mrGutWrench]

Pull the cover and look in there right away to see what went wrong. Easy to spot usually.

__. What Oliver calls the "cover" here is what I call the "blister" in my post above. Sorry, if I overstepped here, Oliver. (Oliver fixed my 5th gear about 5 weeks ago and he knows more about these gearboxes than I'll ever come near of learning.)

__. Here's how to get to that cover. Jack up the left front tire and put the car on a safe jack stand. Remove the left front wheel and then the plastic side plate (attached to the engine lower "skid" plate so you might as well drop that, too.) Right behind that plastic side plate, you'll see the 5th gear cover with a ring of screws holding it on. Put a drain tray under that cover, remove the screws and pull the cover off. Since any little imperfection in the gasket will cause a leak, it's good to have a new gasket for when you put it together.

__. And Hev is right about checking the cables - always check the easy, cheap stuff first!