After an evening at the drag strip, I had one last run... It had more axle tramp than i was comfortable with, so i backed off mid-launch.

The car shifted as per usual from 1st to 2nd to 3rd, and the crunch into 4th.

On the way back down the return ramp I had difficulty selecting 3rd gear and it was impossible to get 4th and 5th. Reverse still works fine, as does 1st and 2nd.

I'm thinking that I've broken a shift linkage or something similar... Anyone else here had a similar experience?

What should I be looking for when I drop the box?

I'm hoping that it didn't chip any of the gears when it crunched into 4th gear...

 

did you miss any shifts? Possible that you hit 5th trying for 3rd? If so you may have shattered your 5th gear synchro and its pieces lodged in other areas. Can you get reverse?

 

Remove the shifter housing and see if the selector and selector forks are messed up. Hopefully that's all you damaged. If those parts look normal you've got to go deeper or just set it aside and get another tranny.

Not related. However, you quite possibly rounded off the shift teeth that can also scrap a gear. Remove the main pan and have a look. The magnet will tell the story pretty quickly.

 

i had a similar problem except mine had nothing to do with drag racing i was just pulling up to a stop light and i stopped i went to put it back in 1st to take off and it made a wierd sound and went to first like it was neutral. apparently i broke a pin and it ended up grinding all the syncronizing teeth off 1st and 2nd. the fix was going to be upwards of 1000 duckets so i just bought a tranny. it was alot easier and i had always had 5th gear problems anyway so now that problem is solved as well.

 

Reverse works just fine...

I won't have time to pull it till the weekend.
On another note- i've been looking at the manual and it gives you a good rundown on the gearbox mechanics, but not how to actually remove the box from the car.

Anyone have a link for a tutorial on this?
It looks to be pretty straight forward, but you don't know until you actually start pulling it apart.