greatdane66

Yes, definitely in neutral when trying to rotate the input shaft left or right. Strange deal, I was just trying to rule out some kind of safety switch that I was missing without the linkage. So if it should shift like any other transmission, I’m just in for a drive to a yard far far away haha.

Thanks for the write up - From neutral I can't rotate the shaft left at all... zero movement with a good amount of force using a long screwdriver like you said. Right it moves barely at all, don't think it's enough to be 5th and reverse. This trans has been in the junkyard since 1998, no clue why they would keep it for 20 years if its only got 2 gears.

Doing a 5MT swap into my EA81 Brat... One junkyard within 200 miles has a 5MT D/R from an 86' that's already pulled from the car and on the shelf with no lever assembly for the shifter or the 4wd. I can only put it into what seems to be neutral, 3rd, and 4th (may be 1st and 2nd...straight forward, straight back). I'm unable to rotate the linkage left or right to shift through the other gears. Am I missing something like some kind of safety or is this transmission garbage? Hard to tell without the shift lever assembly. I should be able to test shift through all of the gears on these transmissions, right? Going from a 4spd to this so I'm not familiar with them.

For an ea82, I’ve read on here that the drive shaft length is the same but the front half of the driveshaft is different - what am I looking for? Swapping a 5mt into an ea81.

Pm sent

As far as the shifter slop, for me the issue wasn't the bushings where the shifter mounts to the linkage like in the link above, but where the trans rod mounts to the linkage with a roll pin. I did this mod to fix it, worked like magic. http://www.indysworld.com/subaru/general/USRM/mick-usrm/ea81-shifter-fix/EA81ShifterFix.html I'm looking for a 5 speed D/R to swap also, old subaru's in Utah junkyards are hard to find - anyone know a good source to buy one?

Check out this link for a write up of the swap: