Very hard to shift and side to side roughness

[Tballer25]

So I discussed my situation in length on the facebook group about a month ago. Car is sitting in the garage now and will be until this gets resolved. Here is a quick explanation:

I have a 95 Base 3k with a 92 tt motor and supporting stuffs. I do have the n/a trans with upgraded clutch (act xtreme) and lightweight flywheel (fidanza). I had movement in 5th gear and after research saw it was my stake nut. I drove it for a while without going into 5th but finally decided to tighten the stake nut. Upon removing the end case of the trans, the 5th gear syncho fell out with two rings. The synchro seemed to be in "decent" shape, but the two rings were pretty bad. One went right "outside" of the synchro, and the other was still up for debate per the responses on the facebook group. Well, I put it back together after tightening the nut and restaking it. Get everything good and back on the ground. (I also did a tranny flush) I start the car and my shifter would NOT go iinto reverse. Side to side it has roughness like there is something blocking it....So I try to go through the gears with my foot on the clutch. 1st and 2nd are ok, 3rd is really hard to get into, 4th is even harder, 5th seems impossible, and reverse is the hardest of all. What is weird is that once i force it into the gear it stays in there and drives fine.

I tried to do some troubleshooting but couldn't figure out what was wrong. While doing the flush, I know my wrench and hand hit the linkage a few times, but barely. My dad (attempting to help me the whole time) thinks that I tightened the stake nut too much (no torque wrench, but definitely over 113 ftlb. I do not think that is related but I am open to anything.

I drove the car home 250 miles and kept it in 4th gear the whole way. No issues with slippage or anything like that. Everything works fine except it is REALLY hard to shift.

I am convinced it is the linkage, but don't understand how my slight bumping into it would cause what is going on.

If you can think of anything to check, please let me know. The car is not my DD, but I love driving it and do not want to cause any further harm by driving it around. I work 5 days a week and school 2 days, so I really only get a full day off every other week. The day I dedicate to working on the car I want to have a good basis of what to troubleshoot.

Thanks for the read, any comments/advice/criticism will be well appreciated :)

[Tballer25]

Bump. Any thoughts appreciated

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[J. Fast]

Check and see if the shifter springs and detents are in place on the shift rails. I'm suspecting you only removed the outer stake nut on the 5th gear assembly, not the center stake nut too? If you check and that's not the issue you're going to have to remove the 3 covers to expose the shift rail interface at the gear selector and examine where it's binding. You could have a bent fork or something out of alignment. Were you able to engage all gears prior to the repair?

[Tballer25]

I only tightened the 5th gear nut, didn't remove it. All gears were fine before repair, but 5th would pop out on occasion. There was slight resistance before but no grinding or anything like that. After the repair I could still get into the gears with no grinding, but it is just really really hard. There is a lot of roughness just moving it aide to side in neutral so that's why I suspect linkage.

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[Bloodlust182]

You didnt take the hub off and install the keys and clip spring that fell out did you like i posted on FB? I would pop off the shift rail springs/ detent balls and see if they are out of place/ grease them up too while you are in there.

[Tballer25]

I did not. I just put in one of the clips. The one that goes between the end cap and the 5th gear synchro. I haven't even had a chance to remove the linkage from the trans and check for resistance. Basically I drove her home that next morning first thing in the morning and drove to work. Haven't had ample time since then to look at it. Luckily I have my other 3s to dd.

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[Tballer25]

Now that it is home and doesn't need to be driven anywhere I can take the trans apart as needed, but obviously if my linkage is the issue then I would want to fix that before taking apart the trans. I also need to get new clips for when I work on it. What's a good place for specific trans parts like that?

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