I've been having weird tranny issues. Somedays she shifts fine and smooth from 1st to 5th to R. Then other days I can't shift her into 1st and sometimes 1st and 2nd. This only occurs after driving for a duration. 3rd thru 5th and reverse are fine.

Yesterday I went to walmart (8 miles drive) over some new roads that were really hilly. By the time I got to the intersection to turn into walmart I couldn't shift into 1st or 2nd. So I had to high rev her in 3rd to get into the parking lot. Came back about 20 minutes later and still could not get her into 1st or 2nd so I took a different route home and had her mostly in 3rd and 4th.

Came home, pop up the hood, and came back 10 mins later to check out what was going on and she shifts fine into all gears.

I'm thinking something is jamming the input shaft bearing. Would a trans fluid flush resolve this or do I need to replace the input shaft bearing? If I need to replace it can I just take the car to a shop and ask them to replace the input
shaft bearing and seal or do they only do 'rebuilds' and swaps? Has anyone had this issue or know how much the cost would be?

 

Are you sure it's not something wrong with your shift linkage or even the upper clutch pedal mount breaking (which is quite common)?

 

clutch pedal mount breaking I'm sure it isn't because that happened to me on my 91SE. I would have to check the shift linkage nut I would think that if the shift linkage was bad/going bad/loose etc..it would affect all the gears and not primarily 1st and 2nd.

 

im going to guess is something wrong with your master/slave cylinder. and your clutch is not disengaging all the way all the time. that would make it hard to put into gear.. and the gears with the best syncros are going to be the gears that it goes into the easiest. That or its something messed up with the clutch itself.

 

does anything whine when you have the clutch released, and silence when you push it in?
that would be indicative of a bad ISB. if it is a bad ISB, it's essentially a rebuild.
anyway, HOW would it not go into 1-2? would it not go to the left, or not go up and down?
does 5-r work fine?

 

It would go left and not into 1st (up). Second gear (down) it would go almost half ways and will not lock so it slips out..3,4,5 and R work flawless.

I want to reiterate that this only happens occasionally and not all the time. It seems to happend when th car has been running for a period of time and usually after running on rough roads.

Haven't notice whining/silence..will do that when I get home.

 

I bet it shifts fine when the car isn't running. If so it's the pressure plate and the splines gets weaker when it gets hot. In other words it's not fully disengaging. I might be wrong but I've experienced that before.

 

tear it apart, replace all bearings and seals, new clutch kit, exedy of course, check over the gearing and synchro's, you'll need 2 punches and a brass hammer and a press, i just did mine, after all these yrs these cars need it specially if you drive the **** out of your car like i do, now of course putting it back together is not as easy, you will need a feeler gauge and some shims, this is mainly for your input shaft, im assuming you have the fsm and some mechanical skills, a shop will cost you about $500 for the job, this of course is if you source a bearing and seal kit for the tranny, than make sure and put in some gl4 rated gear oil, mt-90 is my choice mainly because its all i can find locally, in my case my gearing and synchros were fine, most of the bearings were done, diff and input were baad, throw out bearing was bad to, my clutch disk was done, right down to the rivets..my ve only has 185,000 kms on it and everything was at its end so do yourself a favor and rebuild it, even a low mileage used lsd trans is like $750, rebuilding is always the better choice..

 

OK. When the clutch is disengaged there is a slight whining/rubbing sound. When engaged it is silent. It probably is not only the input shaft but probably old and worn bearings.

I am leaning towards a rebuild. I just don't have the time to try and do it myself anymore. So I am looking at ~$200 for a rebuild kit and ~$500 for labor, correct?

 

the noise you hear when you let the clutch pettle out if the throw out bearing...but that has nothing to do with your situation.. i had the same problem with my 5 speed about 3 years ago.. ended up being the input shaft bearing...go get a used tranny and put it in your self, im not a mechanic by anymeans and it took me a day to take the the tranny out replace clutch and throw out bearing and put it back in.. pretty simple and very basic...

 

Plus one! There may be other things going on....maybe ISB is going out, but I'm with Maxmaxima91. First thing you need to do is check for fluid leak at the slave cylinder. Rule out the more obvious and simple things first. If all that checks out fine, then you need to move on to addressing the ISB.