Today I was coming home from Cory's, my friends house, and I noticed that my car wouldnt stay in fifth gear. After driving for a bit I finally got it to go in gear but it kicked itself right back out. I went a little farther and tried one more time, this time it went into fifth gear but it kicked the shifter out of the spot for fifthgear, like it was in nuetral but I was still excelerating. After about six seconds it finally kicked it out of gear and reved to about 6k. Then I hear it. A clunk clunk clunk. I looked in my rear view and cory swerved over to dodge a piece of my tranny. Now Im in a big ass bind. I was planning on ordering the rebuild kit for my other motor this weekend, which Im still going to do, and now Im out of a car all the way. This is what I plan on doing now:

Get the block done and the crank walk fix
Buy a new tranny
put it together slowly and do it perfect.

Hopefully having it done by spring and ready to tear up the strip.

Does this sound like a good plan and what could have caused my tranny to do this?

Isn't popping out of gear one of the symtoms of CW?

Not sure. I dont really know the symptoms, so fill me in.

bent shift fork. you might be able to bandaid it by adjusting your linkage but it sounds to me like a bent shift fork.

no theres no fixing this one. A chunk bigger than a soft ball broke off of the tranny and was laying on the road.

actually, I bet it wasn't a bent shift fork at all. Sounds like a loose retaining nut. Its a common problem on DSM trannys that most people never experience, because well...the trannys go before they get loose. But many people have had experience with this problem, and found that it will looses itself, causing 5th gear to pop in and out of gear, and then eventually come undone and blast through the tranny like a morter shell.

Just my two cents.

that sounds like thats what happened, exactly.

from the VFAQs top 1000:

This is a symptom of a serious problem, at least on 1G DSMs. Shifter movement is not generally normal in DSMs. Having the shifter move around, especially in 5th gear, or popping out of gear (even once or twice) could be an indication of a loose retaining nut inside the transmission. Several 1G DSMers have had the rotten experience of having this nut come off completely, and consequently blasting a hole in their transmission. This problem only affects FIFTH gear - gears 1 through 4 and reverse do not appear to suffer from this difficulty.

Those who are uncertain must read this post and this post, both by Paul Lyons, and this one by Ashok Babu, who had his transmission fail on him. Don't take a chance on this one, since the inspection procedure is easy.

This problem does not appear as common on 2Gs, and at least one owner has reported that there was a loose nut in his shifting assembly that was causing the shifter to pop out of 5th. This is NOT the same nut that is involved in the 1G problem.

2G owners who suffer from problems with the shifter moving around in a gear OTHER than 5th gear have a different problem. David Gowlowski reported that his transmission failed because of a bad bearing on the input shaft, which corroded away until his car would not shift into second gear. He believed that this bearing was part of a bad lot. He keeps a report on his website: read all about his problems here.

links:

here
here again
sounding familiar yet?


Wow, strangely enough, it seems that I may have diagnosed your problem. Trust me, that rarely happens, I am a car idiot.