This car "only" has 115,000 miles and jumps out of 5th gear. All other gears and the clutch work fine. Problem has gradually gotten worse until now 5th gear cannot be used at all. It will go in, but will jump out within a few seconds. I have the factory shop manual, and it looks like all the parts relating to 5th gear are on the very back end, or I guess I should say driver side end of the tranny. There appears to be a good 6" of clearance between the removable cover and the fenderwell. I guess you can see where I am going with this, would it be possible to fix this problem with the tranny in the car? While I would be capable of pulling the tranny, if I did so I would want to replace the friction disc, pressure plate, etc, greatly increasing the parts cost and time the car would be out of service. I would also have to disturb the axle shafts and boots, all of which appear to be in good condition right now, but might not survive all the flexing around from being disconnected and reinserted..
In the mean time, the little car still gets 32 mpg easy in city/highway mix with just 4 speeds. But it is tachin' about 4000 RPM at 70 mph, and it would just be nice to have 5 speeds again. The body and interior are in great shape, it uses a little oil, but the original variable venturi "carb from hell" even works fine on this one.
Lee Richardson Mech-Tech Evansville, Indiana