Lost all gears except 3rd and 4th

Sup all,
I posted a while ago about a clutch change and you all were extremely helpful and it went more or less smoothly (I sure learned a lot). Well, I am back with another weird problem...

Yesterday while driving to get a burrito at work, I hit a red light. When it turned green I brought the car from 1st thru 3rd and heard a strange sound between 2nd and 3rd and the shifter felt real loose. When I tried to downshift I found I couldn't get out of 3rd gear. I managed to get it back to work by grinding the clutch a lot and keeping it in 3rd, at which point I got under the car and started messing with stuff. All of a sudden the shift linkage arm falls off the tranny mount and onto the ground! The little spring pin was still attached.

At this point I was very glad that it was not something else (someone said something about a synchro in the tranny). But I used 3 zip ties and cinched them really hard instead of using the spring pin again and I tried driving the car, but I still only have 3rd and 4th gears! I am not sure what is going on at this point. I thought this jury-rigged idea should work with the zip tie thing. Could it be something else and the falling off shift linkage was a coincidence or a symptom of something else? I am doubtful but maybe...

Has anyone else seen this problem and what do you recommend? I am having a hard time getting the spring pin back into the hole as well, how the hell am I supposed to do that with just pliers? I know this sounds like a stupid question but I really have no experience with this stuff I am just trying to deal with the sh!t as it flies through the fan, and it's been a PITA messing with it so far. :(

Thanks for any advice,
Mike

i dunno, this is just a guess but i think maybe ur tranny is gone, and that split pin was a bitch for me too when i did my clutch, but it was getting it out that was hard, to get it back in we just lined everything up and tapped it back in with a hammer and a punch

but by the sounds of it, since u lost 1st and 2nd (maybe 5th i dunno, u didnt mention anything about it unless u have the STD tranny) but i would just suggest getting a new tranny

All you do is take a punch or a phillips, then take a hammer and bash it out from the bottom. Should only take u less than a minute that way. It works every time for me!

I'm thinkin' you should try out a different shift linkage and see what happens. I had a similar problem, but it was the bolt that went through the shifter to the shift linkage that fell out. I only had 3rd and 4th, then the whole thing fell out, and I didn't get any gears. I replaced the bolt, and everything was fine.

Woohoo! Wow, that split pin takes a lot of hammering to get in there. I'm pleasantly surprised that I got my 1st, 2nd, 5th, and R gears back after getting the pin in. I guess those zip ties just dont come close to the pressure that sprint pin does!

Thanks for the help & advice, and I'm very glad it isnt my tranny. (I'm too poor to afford a new one right now...)

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!

Mike

Marc-OS,
Yeah that's exactly what my experience was (but the other side of the linkage). It's interesting that when you shift into 1st or 2nd, the shift linkage actually twists to the left. When it's in 3rd or 4th, it is straight up & down, so no twisting is involved its just pushing the linkage in and out of the tranny depending on if youre in 3rd or 4th. Finally, 5th and Reverse gears twist the linkage to the right (and in & out also depending on which of the two).

This design by Honda turned out to be very good for me because even though it was just rigged, I was able to grind my clutch in 3rd and get the car going, and 4th is fast enough on the freeway to get home from work! Ha! It must take a lot of pressure to get the linkage to twist all the way over like that for the other 4 gears...

Talk to you later,
Mike

hmm, i cant shift into 3rd or 4th without grinding at all since my swap... and when i downshift to 2nd, it grinds also... think it could be the shift linkage in my case also, or just need a syncro (cable tranny if it matters)