I own a 1990 Ford Ranger and have started having problems with my transmission. I also want to preface this explination by saying I know very little about the interworkings of an automobile, so if I sound like an idiot explaining this, don't laugh. ;-)
The symptoms are fairly simple, when I shift into 3rd gear, it grinds. Now, it only happens when shifting into 3rd gear, and usually only when I am downshifting, like when getting ready to climb a hill. Then, after running for a while, it starts grinding any time I shift into 3rd. Anytime I hit the freeway for more than 5 minutes, once I get off, it grinds in 3rd anytime I try to shift into it, until I park it and let it set for about 4 hours. Then it will go back to only grinding when downshifting into 3rd, unless I run it for longer than say 30 minutes, or if I hit higher speeds (65-70mph), like on the freeway.
Now, I have been doing a little studying on how a manual transmission works and I understand that the grinding is from the collar's dog teeth grinding against the dog teeth on the gear, which makes me think that something isn't getting synchronized so that the collor can engage the gear smoothly. But I don't know why this would only happen in 3rd gear. Again, I know next to nothing about this stuff, so I could be more than way off, but does anyone out there that's more of a gear head than I have any ideas on what could be causing this?
Thanks for any help, Matt