What could cause this?
Before we put the transmission back into the car we decided to pull the mid plate and input shaft and take a quick peek at the 3/4 shift fork and synchro assembly. There was no visible damage to any of the parts (even the stock pads) so we cleaned out the casing, made sure there was no bearing damage, and resealed the mid plate back onto the the transmission. We were just about ready to put it back into the car when we decided to spin the input shaft. When going through the gears from 1st to 3rd, the input shaft spins fairly easily. As soon as you try to spin it in 4th gear it becomes VERY hard. If you shift it to 5th and spin it then go back to 4th it becomes SIGNIFICANTLY easier to turn. But also when you pop it into neutral and spin the shaft, then go to 4th gear, it spins with ease. This seems to be a intermittent problem as it does not do it every time. Does anyone have any idea what could cause this?
Initially we were thinking that the grinding was caused due to a bad synchro, but it looks fine as stated above. The car already has a steel 3-4 shift fork and it is not bent. Not sure what could be going on here. Any help with the problems is greatly appreciated.
It's hard to verify the fork pads since you can't take off the synchro ring/fork from the front. They'll have to be inspected as carefully as possible as they can get compressed down and appear ok, but still cause problems..
As an aside, 4th gear can cause issues if the pilot bushing is bad, and may have been your initial grinding.... It should be checked and maybe just replaced anyway..






