Francisco Martinez

Last week my car finally got a new ignition distributor and was running perfectly but all of the sudden gear shifting became very hard (a lot of force required to engage the gears).

I inspected the shifting linkage and all looks good. I uncoupled the shifting rod from the selector shaft on the transmission. The shifter assembly is moving freely while the selector shaft feels stuck.

This leads me to believe the problem is in the transmission. I am wondering if someone else has had this problem since my mechanic said he has never heard of this and will not take my car until thursday???

Search and found one similar incident but no resolution was posted.
https://rennlist.com/forums/showthre...selector+shaft

Thanks in advance..

Francisco

chris walrod

The first thing you should do is drain your trans oil into a clean oil pan. Have a look at the magnet, also sift through the oil with a strong magnet looking for chunks of metal, or anything out of the ordinary.

Do you have an open diff, not LSD? Open diffs have been known to have spider gears pit and fall apart shortly thereafter. Also needle bearings from the spiders have been reported to have jammed-up the selector mechanism.

Start with this and let us know what you find..

sonny1

Also you might have a bad selector fork,this is common on these trannys,I have seen it a few times,also the selector shaft might be binding at the selector plate,(not as common).But, as Chris suggested,check that oil first! Pa' Lante! cheers,Sonny.
PS/I have all the parts that you might need for the job.

chris walrod

Stuck shifter Seems as though needle bearing bits find their way into the shifter selector mechanism, or shifter interlock assy. Typical is stuck shifter in gear, or cannot get it into gear with a rather solid, mechanical feeling. Then normal shifting for some time.

The real trouble with these parts floating around is when they get lodged between gears sets or worse, embed themselves into the ring or pinion gear. The 9 tooth pinion and 31 tooth ring gear ratio has a 'hunting tooth' feature in that 9 wont evenly divide into 31, so multiple possibilities exist to exactly how many teeth are damaged. Ring and pinion work is expensive. Russian roulette, at this point.

As always, its good to rule out the simple stuff like junk hanging up the shifter assy under the console or the coupler near the trans.

sonny1

As Chris moto says,...Is this a great place or what? cheers,Sonny.

Francisco Martinez

Will drain as Chris said to see if I have any pieces of metal in the tranny and post the results tonight.

Scott, in my case it is not really driveable although I could wrestle with the shifter and get it in gear after a while.

Sonny, It is great to be part of the rennlist family and even better to know there are others in PR. I will PM my phone number, please PM yours so we can chat a little and maybe you could give me some pointers on how to get this repaired i PnR without having to sell my house.

Thanks everyone...

Francisco Martinez

BTW - How do I know if I have an LSD vs. open diff without having to drop the clutch at 7,000rpm and see two skid marks?

sonny1

Francisco,
Jack the car at the rear, put it in neutral, try to move one tire foward, if the other moves foward too then it is lsd.,cheers,Sonny.

chris walrod

Check the option codes under the trunk lid. Look for option 220. Also, while your under your gearbox draining your oil tonight, have a look at the numbers that are stamped into your maincase, just forward of the drain plug. Look for a -2 suffix, that will denote LSD. -1 is open diff.. This is from memory..

brucec59

Not to hijack the thread, but is difficulty coming out of gear indicitive of the same kind of problem? I test drove a '95 the other day, and when I came to a stop, clutch pedal all the way down, the shifter would not come out of 1st gear without a good yank. After it came out, it went in and out normally. Is this likely the same problem as the OP? Thanks.

chris walrod

More than likely a worn clutch, or sticky clutch disk spline where it slides onto the input shaft..

Francisco Martinez

Finally got around to drain the tranny fluid. The plug looks in very bad condition with a lot of metal shavings, see picture attached. One plug is the engine's the other in very bad condition is the tranny's.

I proceeded to drop the engine and transmission, my first on the993 but I had dropped my '77 Carrera 3.0 before so it was no biggie. Will post pictures of dropped engine as soon as I get the camera charged.

I am currently waiting on my mechanic to come separate the tranny from the engine for repairs.

Thanks again for all the help...

Francisco Martinez

Update: The transmission was inspected and to my mechanic's surprise everything looked good with the exception of very small shavings that got on the selector assembly. He cleaned the transmission and the gear selector shaft has become unstuck. He said he will do further inspections just in case.

Looks like I got lucky, I guess time will tell. If all goes well I should have my car up and running this weekend.

AOW162435

Your drain plug looks like you may have a jellyfish swimming around in the tranny

Good luck with getting it back on the road.

Andreas