ok today i spent most of the time "working" on my car cursing and kicking a dumpster... my car is on jackstands so i dont have much room under there..in order to put the tranny back in id have to put it un the jack and slid it under the car..i filled it with fluid while it was on the jack right beofre i slide it under...i slide it under right into the tunnel..since the tranny is out the back of the motor tilts down..so naturally the tailshaft had to be down to align the input into the splines...as i tild the tailshaft i start feeling this coolness...i look to the side and see all the fluid pouring out the output seal...after i few dozen curses and a breaker bar againt the dumpster i pulled it back out fliied it fluid again and put the driveshaft onto the output...before i put it back under the car i slide the driveshaft in and out a little to make siure all the splines got lube....i slide the whole thing under driveshaft and all...i got the tranny aligned and bolted to the bell houseing..so as i start raising the jack under the cross memeber the driveshaft is in my way...so i slide it out and fuid starts coming out again..so i try to push the shaft the rest of the way back in...only it wont go back it. i had to tap it firmly with a hammer to get it to go back in....i got the cross memeber bolted in the shifter snugged down and everything ready to rock....i get out from under my car coverd in tranny fluid, grease and rust feeling happy at the accompliishment i just made....i got into the car and run it throught the gears and make sure the clutch is worlking and its all good... as soon as i touch the shifter it starts flopping around, obviously not in the offset block...so i go back under the car highly pissed off and unbolt everythign and bring it down enough to unbolt the shifter as see whats up...i ran it thorught the gears about 50 times before i put it in so i know it was on right...after i get hte shifter off the offset block i notice that the block isnt in the nuetral position as it was when i put it up....it felt like it was in 3rd but im not to sure...i try to move it back to nuetral but it wont budge.....i know i have to drop the tranny again., but i wanna know WTF is going on.. why when i tried to put the DS back in it was really hard, and why my shifter isnt connected... help a brotha out guys!

You shoudl definetely be able to move through the gears even with the shifter unbolted. Get a regular ratchet extension and stick in the hole in the block and try to go through the gears while watch the block move around. If it wont move and you're SURE it was before you bolted it up it's quite possible it's stuck in a gear. It's possible when you have new sliders and not everything is worn in. Try to push the clutch in while you're trying to move the block, that will help get it unstuck. If it just wont budge, then maybe you put a fork on the wrong way... I'd say if it's that much trouble to move through the gears now, you definetly want to open it and have a look see.

The main problem seems to be, you're spending a great deal of effort in going out of your way to deliberately create extra work for yourself, for what reason I can't begin to guess.

Leave the fluid out until after you get the trans in the car. What you're doing is a near 100% guarantee of getting to take a bath in it.

I never put in a T-5 with a jack. I just get under there and lift it up and stab it in. A jack is too much work. The trans doesn't weigh enough to be bothered with all that extra fooling around.

Leave the shifter out until after you get the trans in. If you hang it from the interior somehow, you can put in the trans, then reach up around the top of it and put the shifter on, and bolt the bolts. The very last thing I do out of the whole process is put the fluid in. I use one of those $5 pumps you can get at the parts store that screws onto the top of a gear lube bottle.

Meanwhile, you can easily fix the shifter without pulling the trans; just support the trans and remove the crossmember bolts from the frame and let the trands down, use a box-end wrench to take out the shifter bolts, find the hole in the block, and put the shifter back into it correctly. Don't do a bunch of extra work.

Did I mention how much I hate work? I hate it so much, I'll actually think about what I'm doing before I do it, and structure the task so that it's the least amount of work. In the case of putting in a T-5, that means leaving the console undisturbed in the car, and supporting the shifter from inside with a piece of wire or something; put the trans in; put the shifter on it; put the speedo cable on; put the torque arm bracket back on it; raise it up and bolt up the crossmember; put the driveshaft in; and last of all, put the fluid in.

Don't worry about the drive shaft seeming tight in the bushing. Won't hurt a thing as long as it goes in.

RB ownz :hail: all hail

ok its been a while cuz ive been in TN on vacation lol...

i took RB's advice and pulled the tranny again..(his advice reassured me that it wouldnt be much to get it back in ) im really glad i did..

i got the tranny out from under the car and put the shifter back on...it was in 4th gear!...i know for a fact when i put the shifter back on it was in nuetral...so i put it into neutral and spin the input..ok good..then i spin the input and shift the gears to make sure thats good...and the output is frozen..i tried to turn the driveshaft with the tranny in nuetral and nothing..i really tried to twist it and it wouldnt budge...so i had to hammer the shaft off and when i got it off the output spun like nothing...
so somehting happend when i had to hammer the driveshaft in

i brought it home with me today and im about to go take the tail housing off and have a looksy...

sounds easier to take the console out to get the shifter off then remove the whole trany. everytime ive taken mine out ive taken the console out first, took the shifter off and then the last thing i did was put the shifter on and the console back together. why would u take out ur tranny to get teh shifter off? and wasnt it a pain in the *** to get the shifter through the hole in the floor while getting it to slide into the bell housing?

i had to remove the tranny becuase there was a problem with my tailhousing bushing.

ok last night i got hte tail housing off and looked around...i noticed 2 fairly deep gouges in the bushing..but there arent any marks on the slip yoke

i have another bushing and seal..

id really like some input on this guys..

what caused this?..and how does it not happen again

Interesting. I changed my bushing in the spring 2003 and it solved a humming sound I had while crusing at certain highway speeds. Here we are in September and my problem is here once again. I used a snap-on tool to remove the old bushing though. This saves you from messing with the tranny at all. Just remove the driveshaft, insert the tool and the bushing pops out easily.

did you use that sleeve retainer stuff?...

its loctite but for sleeves and bushings

No, I didn't.
I lubbed the bushing with tranny fluid and that was it.

Did I miss something?

that sleeve retainer stuff decreases the chances of that bushing sliding around or in/out...

its a loctite for sleeves...its adds 3000 psi of holding power...