I had several gears go out as I was pulling in to my megachurch for an early Easter service Thursday, 04-02-26. Hopefully Jesus will give me credit for showing up (hah hah). A tow truck deposited the car in my driveway. Right now, it seems like I am absolutely stuck in fifth gear. I bought those METAL shifter bushings from eBay some years back, and the cables seem to be working fine in the center console. But sometimes the stickshift will stay left of center, occasionally it SEEMS like I can shift into 1, 3 and 5, and then the stickshift only wants to stay right of center. No amount of force or finesse seems to "do the trick".

Did the differential pin fail? If it did, I would THINK that no gears would work, but right now, I'm stuck in fifth gear.

After I check the cables at the transmission end, is there anything else I should consider? I though manual trannies basically never failed.....

I'm very anxious here, do let me know if you have any ideas......thanks !!

 

The shifting mechanism features two cables. The one on the right CLEARLY goes back and forth with no difficulty when you move the lever up (third gear) or down (fourth gear). That one ROTATES the round shaft that enters the transmission. Let's put the stick exactly in the middle, so every bit of common wisdom says it is in neutral.

Now that it is in neutral, you SHOULD be able to move it left or right freely, this will push or pull on the cable on the left (which will pull or push the round shaft further into or further out of the transmission. But you can't move it right or left, not even with some force. When you remove the left cable from the shift mechanism, you can move the stick left or right easily, so it SHOULD work. While the left cable is disconnected, grab the end of the cable and try to push or pull. You can't move the cable back and forth.

So clearly something inside the transmission is preventing me from moving the stickshift right or left, when it is in neutral. This is something you MUST be able to do, in order to get to first gear, or reverse (or any other gear, obviously).

Should I raise the car on jack stands, and maybe rotate the tires with my hands, to reduce stress on the parts, and THEN try to move the stickshift right or left? I don't think I need to do this. The SLIGHT slope of my driveway was never enough to make it hard to move the stickshift (or cause transmission malfunction) in the past. Should I take a pair of pliers and try to move the "L" shaped bracket on the tranny back and forth, and more directly push and pull the round shaft into and out of the transmission? Again, I don't think so. The cable should move freely when I move the stick right and left, and it absolutely will not move. So I think we have our answer. Should I remove the white back-up light switch and the cover it is screwed into to gain a better view of internals? I'm not sure this provide any "super-duper" visual evidence of what has gone wrong.

It sounds like there is DEEP trouble DEEP inside the transmission. Any thoughts?

 

Disconnect both cables at the transmission. Do both cables move as they should? If so replace the transmission. If you have ever opened a manual transmission then do that. The transmission probably ran low on oil or it has 250k miles on it.