83 SR5 shifter fork broken!

[wildkyle55]

Driving down the road, I found myself in neutral, with second gear still engaged, not a fun situation. I got pulled off safely and got towed up with few complications, fortunately. I do, now, find myself in a rather sticky situation. This little tercel is my daily driver, and I have no way of getting to work. Had to call out today, and should be able to get a ride tomorrow, but I can't be bumming rides off of people forever. Does someone know of a way I can get a fork and quickly get it replaced, or if it's something that happens all the time and how I can fix it easily, and I just don't know the trick? Any help is greatly appreciated! :C

[xirdneh]

how do you know if its a broken shift fork?
have you removed and disassembled the tranny?
if you have not then i would recommend first removing the shifter and checking it out
if there is nothing wrong there then you would pull the tranny and take it apart to see what is wrong
it could be one of several things
if you cannot do this type of stuff then your best bet is to find another tranny

if it is a shift fork i may have one for you

[wildkyle55]

I don't know for a fact that it is a fork, all I know is, that it is acting like a a broken shift fork. It took more force (significantly) to pull it out of gear than usual, and when the shifter reached the neutral position, it was still firmly in gear without slipping. I have not, at this time, had a chance to pull the tranny appart, as it only happened this morning. I am trying my best to figure out, for positive, what is wrong with it, and find a way to get it fixed reasonably quickly, as this is my daily driver vehicle, and I can't afford a lot of downtime. As much of a pain as it is, do you think that there is anything you could tell me to troubleshoot it, beside pulling the tranny out and looking at it?

[Petros]

I have had this situation twice on two different Tercel4wd. Once it made very bad noises in the trans, and lots of metal parts came out the drain plug. I did manage to drive it home in 2nd gear (about 40 miles), but the trans was sounding very bad the whole way. I scrapped that trans because of all of the metal shavings that came out of the oil drain hole without taking it appart.

the other time I was able to leave the car, and go get another transmission and swap it out. I took that one apart and could find nothing wrong with it. We could find no reason for it to be stuck in 2nd gear and the shift lever flopping around loose like it was neutral. that trans got rebuilt with lots of new parts, and is waiting to be installed in a project car.

There is no way of knowing if it is just something popping out of alignment, or if indeed something internal is broken, without taking it all apart. taking a trans that far apart is a big job that requires a number of specialized tools, not a simple thing to do no matter your experiance level.

Best bet is to find another good trans and swap it out. It will take a weekend to do it, might consider replacing the clutch and throw out bearing while you are there. find a good trans will be the challenge, you might want to buy a $400 beater car to drive while you go on a hunt for a good trans.

Good luck.