Tranny keeps popping out of first gear. WTF??

[tsi1991awd]

Been combatting clutch / tranny issues for about a month. 3rd gear was completely out due to a broken shift fork. Everything else checked out fine. All synchro's were good, all gears were good, shift rails, forks, etc.

Got my car back last night, drove it around and it was all good. Drove it today and it was alright then all of a sudden it wants to pop out of first gear!! The clutch is brand new, new flywheel, new master and slave, etc. Bled the shit out of it, adjusted the cables....

It will go into first gear just fine with no grinds. When I try to drive in first, it pops out and goes to Neutral. When I try to put it back into first gear right after it pops out, it grinds. WTF could it be???

 

[pboglio]

Let's assume one or more of those was the cause. Would it only cause the problem intermittently? The car DID NOT do this before the tranny was taken apart and put back together with the new 3rd gear. Then again, I hardly drove the car before all hell broke loose with the drivetrain (worn clutch lever, leaking hydraulic cylinders, 3-4 shift fork broken, clutch drag, etc. etc.)

Yes, the gear popping out first starts out intermittent, then happens all the time. Then 2nd gear starts popping out intermittently, then happens all the time.

What keeps the gear in place is a good solid dog teeth engagement between the side of the actual gear and the hubslider mating dogteeth, as well as the hubs slider key which snaps the gear in place. Just a tiny little slop in the gear stack or tiny bit of wear on the shift fork and the shifter can't quite engage the dogteeth and they cam out, then the hubslider key will shoot or spit the shift fork back out of gear. When that happens, no amount of force is going to hold the gear in place. Its such a specific mechanical problem you can almost nail it down to those issues. Anything that creates slop in the gear stack creates the a similar problem.

What I did was engage the car into 1st gear from the tranny itself, then start the car and if 1st gear popped out I ruled out the shifter linkage from being the problem. I find it hard to believe its the slave cylinder or clutch, but I'm not a tranny rebuilder either.

 

[tsi1991awd]

What I did was engage the car into 1st gear from the tranny itself, then start the car and if 1st gear popped out I ruled out the shifter linkage from being the problem. I find it hard to believe its the slave cylinder or clutch, but I'm not a tranny rebuilder either.

As I mentioned earlier, I had the car off, took the shift linkage off of the tranny itself...put the tranny into the first gear position and I was still able to roll the car like it was in Neutral. ALL other gears locked the wheels up.

 

[pboglio]

As I mentioned earlier, I had the car off, took the shift linkage off of the tranny itself...put the tranny into the first gear position and I was still able to roll the car like it was in Neutral. ALL other gears locked the wheels up.

Right, so at that point I'd say you would need to drop the tranny and have someone who really knows what they are doing take a look at it. Most of the time you can shift the trans off the car and tell whether its too tight, or whether the shifter is really snapping the dogteeth into position solidly or that kind of thing before you risk reinstalling the trans. If it shifts good off the car, it'll most likely shift good on the car. I do this every time before I reinstall my tranny.
Maybe TRE could give you a good deal, though SHEP and JACKS transmissions all seem to have very good reputations and competitive rebuild prices.

 

[tsi1991awd]

Right, so at that point I'd say you would need to drop the tranny and have someone who really knows what they are doing take a look at it. Most of the time you can shift the trans off the car and tell whether its too tight, or whether the shifter is really snapping the dogteeth into position solidly or that kind of thing before you risk reinstalling the trans. If it shifts good off the car, it'll most likely shift good on the car. I do this every time before I reinstall my tranny.
Maybe TRE could give you a good deal, though SHEP and JACKS transmissions all seem to have very good reputations and competitive rebuild prices.

I saw the TRE trannys....the "good" rebuilt ones are cheap and I don't need to send in my core. Shep rebuilds are a good price but require me sending my tranny in, so I'll be without it for a couple weeks longer.

This is a very very VERY long shot, but could this be say....a fluke? Maybe somehow the syncrho got stuck or something and wasn't allowing the tranny to engage the gear and then worked loose again? Because like I was saying, the car was shifting fine, driving fine and everything then all of a sudden started acting up....then magically started working again.

 

[pboglio]

No, I don't think your problem will resolve itself. What your experiencing is wishful thinking, and logically its more likely you have a failure and you need to deal with it early. Your symptoms are textbook.

I've gone thru 3 built tranny's and a couple stockers and they never just fix themselves, they only get progressively get worse till you have to replace everything.

 

[tsi1991awd]

Picked up the car today since the other guy said it was just fine with no problems....it's fine the first time driving down the road. Come to a stop sign and it pops out of gear. I'm like what the #### is this....so I put it back in first and it is fine.

Get down the street, keeps popping out at the stop sign. So I make a U-turn and this is a back road that nobody ever goes down....I pulled off to the side of the road and try to dink with it. I get the car in first and it pops out....I put it in first and move the shifter just a tad to the right and push up and hear a tiny "click" noise from the tranny. It was engaged.

Ended up driving the car home and seeing one more time if it was a cable adjustment....adjusted the cables and still popped out of gear. So if you just put it in first lightly, it will stay SOMETIMES, but pop out other times. If you put it in lightly then nudge it a hair more, you hear the click of it going into gear.

I ended up taking off the cable bracket attached to the tranny since I bought aluminum bracket spacers / bushings. Once I got the bolts out and popped the rubber encased brass bushing out of the bracket holes, I was pretty shocked at what I saw. One bushing had a fair amount of rubber still on it, but it was beat up. The other had almost NO rubber on it and there was the outter ring of rubber that was flattened and completely separated from the brass. Needless to say, that may have been a cause for my shifting problem as well. It allowed for a lot of slop.