Jadz928

Had a 5mph front end accident today with the '84. No serious front end damage. I'm okay, just tired.

Problem is in the transmission. Seems to be stuck in first, when lever is apparently in neutral.

I have 2 gates, 1 up, 1 down. Both appear to be full lock. Meaning letting the clutch out stalls the engine (even with a bit of engine rpm load).

Clutch works, shift linkage is good. Tried indexing the rear coupler, no change.

It's in the box. What could it be?

Any help will be much appreciated, thanks.

BC

Does the car seem like it takes off in first in this permanent gear? If it was stuck in first, then it would NOT be going back and forth very easily if the reverse lockout was working.

Oh, I read it better now. You are saying that the car will not move. You have two gears selected? That's interesting, but I am sure frustrating.

BC

I remember now. If you somehow get that selector ring onto 1st, but then pull the lever in such a way as to get it out of the groove on that selector rod before the rod is pulled back, you basically will have first permanently chosen without actually having the lever IN first.

Mrmerlin

well when you suddenly stopped the engine and trans kept moving till they hit the MM stops. So i wonder if the shifter rod may have gotten damaged .
Can you rock the car back and forth while you try to move the shifter, to see if possibly the shift fork in the trans might have gotten extra force put on it
Worst case your dropping the trans to open it up and realign the shift selector.
Has any work ever been done to the trans?? is it possible that one of the shift rod detent ***** was left out thus enabling the different shift rods to move and have a second gear selected

James Bailey

If a 5 speed trans is sitting upright on the rear diff cover and someone runs it through the gears it often does exactly what you state....1st is engaged and when you shift into another gear the trans is locked up and the engine stalls. Perhaps the inertia of the accident also moved it into 1 st. The fix is pulling the trans and moving the gear/slider which got away......there will be no damage.

76FJ55

As James states the slider for first is out of position (engaged in first with the shift lever in the neutral position) I had our old Chevy truck do the exact same thing, stuck in granny low. it was a long slow 10 miles home. in the Chevy it was fairly easy to remedy once I got home. just hade to release the ball cup on the top of the trany where the stick went into to sliders then reinsert the stick into the gear slider that was out of position and shift it back to neutral. with the 928 I'm sure it will be a little more difficult to access but the solution is the same.
The reason it lock up the trany when you shift into any other gear is that you cant get the output to multiply by any two ratioa andgive you matching in and out RPM except when it is 0 RPM so when engagine to gear ratios the inbut and output RPM are locked at 0.

76FJ55

OK, I just looked at the shift mechanism in the PET. there may be apossibility of rectifying this with out dropping the trans. I of course have no manual trans car to look at to see how accessible or possible this may be but here is my theory. in the pic I have attached which is two pages copy and pasted from the PET pages illustration no. 302-00 and 304-01 The item that is out of position is item No. 4 in the right half of the pic. now look at the left half. there is a set of parts in the lower left corner angled up at a 45 deg angle (# 14, 16, 17, 19, 20) these are the detent mechanism that hold that shaft in any of its 3 locations 1, N, or R. if you where to remove #20 the spring and detent mechanism would then fall out and the only thing holding the shaft # 4 in its incorrect position would be friction. you could then possibly but a long narrow pointed object into the hole for the detent assembly and push the shaft to its N position. with thte rear of the car lifted you may be able to rock the rear wheels to help get the shift shaft to slide as the helical cut gears when turned one way aid engagement and the other tend to force it out of gear. if your lucky with the detent mech removed you may be able to get it back into position just by rocking the R wheels back and forth against the trans and hope it pops into N at which point the wheel will spin freely.

Any way that's my theory, for what it's worth.

Shiftmechanism.jpg?t=1260940369

Mrmerlin

Nice post FJ55

Jadz928

Sorry to write and dash yesterday. Got tied up with other thing and haven't got back to it yet.

Thanks for all your ideas. Reads like I'm stuck in the wrong gear.

FJ55, will try the detent idea. I believe I understand.

BC

ALMOST easier than trying to work on that transmission with it IN the car would be to disconnect the TT from the front end and slide the ENTIRE transaxle and suspension out the back of the car.

As a separate point, I had a transmission that would NOT go into 2nd. For three months I drove it, and one time while it was warm (after trying it EVERY DAY) - I tried it and it went in.

30 year old Porsches. What are you going to do?

FastHackem

WOW I thought I was the only one with this problem!! I too have a transaxle in first gear lock-down with the gear selector in neutral. I am interested to see if the fix described by 76FJ55 worked. Of course my transaxle is from an '86 944na. Any input would be highly appreciated.

Jadz928

^^^^ Car is in the same location, and have not touched it over the Holiday.

Will update this thread when I get to it.

SMTCapeCod

Was your hand on the shifter the time of impact?
In my '85 long ago, I had the shift fork deform and get stuck on the collar, effectively locking the shift mechanisms. I'll hope that's not it for you...took a while to get the new fork from Germany...

Landseer

Boys and Girls,

This problem is SOLVED.

Jadz928 said he will post some visuals and a better description when he gets better computer access.

Basically, we opened the top cover of the box. Jadz928 saw that the 1/R shift rod was out-of-position. We removed the detent plunger and spring for the 1/R shaft, in case it was an obstruction. We then tapped the shift fork very lightly with a brass drift in order to reposition the rod. Replaced the detent. Good to Go !!!!!

What happened? Well, the car was moving forward, probably with the selector engaged in the 2/3 plane. On impact, the momentum of the 1/R shaft carried the rod forward an inch or so, such that it selected 1st on its own.

The selector rod could, now, never align to select the 1/R slider shaft to move it out of first.

The system of mechanical detents, along with the selector fork, has some way of being an interlock system as well to prevent multiple gears from being selected, so the 2/3 plane and the 4/5 plane wouldn't behave properly. And the selector shaft didn't have the range to find the 1/R shaft. Lost in space.

Felt like we had a total breakdown of the box. Turns out, like Jim Bailey suggested, NO DAMAGE was done.

Interesting. As Jadz kept saying to me yesterday, "man, that guy 76DJ55 was right about what happened". Not sure if we could have moved the shaft via the detent hole, though. We removed the box instead. I guess we should test that approach before we button it all back up.

fraggle

right on!!