EnBee

1986.0 5-speed. Started it up in the morning, shifted to reverse as normal, then noticed it didn’t spring back immediately after when going for first gear. Shut the engine off and operated my now floppy shifter—noticed it wouldn’t go into the 4-5 plane at first but after shaking it side to side it would. I figured that must have been the broken off contoured tip fouling the shift forks, hopefully on its way down to the bottom of the transaxle casing.

I knew this day was bound to come but I’m still a little bummed. Plan is to drain the transaxle and hopefully find the broken off end. Since it’s an early ‘86, I *think* it should have the retaining circlip preventing the rest of the spring from falling off and lunching my transaxle.

Anyway, no point to this post other than grousing to a like-minded community and adding another data point in support of the near-100% failure rate for this part…

I’ve got GregBBRD’s “spoon in a disposal” image in the back of my head now. I’m 99% sure I didn’t hurt any of the spinny bits but we’ll see what’s on the drain plug soon enough.