87 Wrangler has difficulty going into gear when driven for a while

Hi there, hope this hasn't been posted before, I couldn't find anything similar. When I start my jeep in the morning everything is fine, slides into gear no problem. However, after having run it for while starts to become increasingly difficult to engage gears. It's got so bad last night on the wat home that 1st gear became a no-go zone and the rest of the gears had to be wrestled into. Next morning..all is fine again and I go through the same daily process. Im the only guy at work who does not look forward to going home :)
Any ideas what I can check out?
Thanks for any help

Stephen

First thing you are going to want to do is change your manual gear lube in your trans. That could cause the problem. But it sounds like something similiar to what I experianced. We had the same problem with a 95. Everything was cool until you drove it for a while. Typically getting off the freeway it was virtually impossible to get into any gear but fourth and fifth. (After the trans heated up?) Anyway, we ended up having to buy a used trans and swapping them out. We or anyone else, couldnt pinpoint exactly what in the trans was causing it and we are not trans expirienced so we decided to swap the whole unit.

I have the same problem. Shifts like butter and than after 30 min for me its hard to get into first and reverse. Have had it for years have been putting off pulling the tranny doing a new clucth and while its pulled apart putting in a rebuilt tranny.

Its in my future though

I've got the same problem with my YJ. It seems more like a clutch issue than trans. I'm going to try a few things ( one at a time ) to see what happens. If I find something I relay it. When the trans. was done in the '95, was the clutch replaced at the same time?

Yes, we replaced the clutch and the flywheel, however when we removed the old trans you could look inside of it and actually see broken off, shaved down, teeth in the gears within the trans. I dont know if it was directly linked to this problem but...

Well I replaced only my clutch disc. I had a full day of hard wheeling and a few trips into town without any trouble at all. I'm thinking that maybe the disc material was expanding to much when hot, causing it to drag on the flywheel and pressure plate, and not allowing it to release all the way.