First off yes I searched and found nothing similar to my problem. I have a 91 GSX and when I try and put it into reverse it won't even try and go in, won't grind, nothing. I can pull the shifter to the right but as soon as I try and pull it down to put into reverse it just stops and doesn't budge. All of my other gears work just fine and even reverse has worked fine til this morning. I drove it last night to my moms house 45 minutes away, worked fine when I backed outta her driveway then headed home and parked in front of my house and got up this morning to go to the store and no reverse. I checked the linkage inside the car and it looked fine and checked it under the hood and it looked fine. Any ideas?


Ok I just went outside and was gonna adjust my shift cables but they're already in spec. I checked the ends of the cables and they're fine. While I had the cables off the shifter when I was gonna adjust it, I moved the cables with my hands and everything seems smooth until I try for reverse. The cable that pulls the selector on the tranny that goes up and down is fine. The cable that moves the selector front and back is also fine until I try for reverse then it doesn't move. When I try for reverse, I pull the cable so the selector on the tranny comes up and it goes fine but when I push the other cable forward to actually engage reverse, it won't budge. Does reverse have it's own separate shift fork? Think it could be broken? Thats what it's leading to.

Reverse doesn't have a fork but rather more like a lever. Can you put the tras in reverse by hand? I mean can you move the lever over and towards you on the transmission itself?

Nope I disc. the cables and tried it by hand and it's still the same. It won't budge when I try for reverse. The one lever moves up and down fine and the other lever that moves front to back also works fine in 1-5th gear. The lever will pull up easy like it should but I can't push the other lever forward to engage reverse. It's like something is jammed inside the tranny. I'm gonna pull the side cover off the trans tomorrow morning and look for anything not in place. Any ideas though would be appreciated.

Pulling off the side cover won't get you anywhere, the only thing under that is 5th gear assembly. I really can't think of anything that would cause the reverse idler to get jammed but all kinds of strange things can happen with these trannies. If the lever to the reverse gear was broken I would think it would move very easy because there wouldn't be any resistance, it would just slide back and forth with out touching the gear. Very interesting.

I have the same problem but what happened is i was driving home and i went to shift into 5th and it grinded so i tried again samething. I get it home and park it then in the morning i tried to back up and it wouldnt go. i pushed it out and drove to school and then home, i adjusted the cable and now 5th works fine but it wont go into reverse

You brought back a pretty old thread... Basically you are dealing with an internal problem like possibly the lockout for reverse might be stuck. You can try disconnecting the cables from the transmission and moving the levers by hand, but you will probably find that it still won't go. Also, the problem could be in the 5 gear synchronizer assembly.

I don't know what causes this but my transmission is halfway there. It's sometimes hard to shift into reverse and I have to try multiple times to get it to move. One night it was extremely cold and it was doing the same thing you described and I couldn't get out of the work parking lot I pushed the shift knob quite hard straight to the right, then down, and it worked. It pissed me off because it took me like 20 minutes to shift into reverse, heh.

I'm curious as to what would cause this problem.

If you can't get it into reverse, then try putting it in nuetral, let out on the clutch and rev the engine slightly. Then push press the clutch pedal and try again, it kinda realignes everything in the tranny. Remember reverse isn't synchronized so it isn't always going to drop right into gear.
Hope that helps some people's problem shifting into reverse.

the thing i think causes this the most is running the tranny low on oil, i beleive that the 5th/rev shift fork or the snychro assembly it just kinda got worn out and now i think its time to rebuild the tranny and this only comes a few weeks before i get the GSX but i guess i have to rebuild it so i can sell it for more money besides the body work it needs