02 2.5l 5mt non turbo sport wagon. First, I consider myself pretty good with subarus but before I pull this trans, I need to ask if anyone has any advice. The car will back up on its own and roll forward with the clutch in. The shifter came out of reverse to neutral position, but will not move any more. Car is still in reverse gear. Just wanting to see if anyone has had this problem and what was it? Thanks!

I'd get underneath and check the shifter linkage.

 

you might also have someone rock the car while you try to free the shifter.

Could be a damaged reverse check mechanism, or one of the shift rails somehow got bent.

 

Is the shifter physically stuck? Can it be moved side to side or forward/backward at all?

on a manual if your in gear and the car moves I have heard that you can screw up your timing? is this true?

It's still in gear but the shifter moved to neutral?  check linkage agreed....

Yeah it moved to neutral but now barely moves (bushing slop mostly) still in reverse. I just bought it and it seems like it had a pretty hard life. Already tried rocking it. I reversed the car into the rollback to tow it and pushed in the clutch and rolled off to park it. I guess the trans is coming down

Edited November 14, 201411 yr by Ricearu

Hmm, I can think of several things that all require the trans to be opened up.

 

Check the linkage under the car, but most of that wouldn't cause this sort of problem unless the roll pins sheared off or broke and the linkage knuckle fell off the input selector where it goes into the back of the trans.

I checked again and it will move to the 1-2 and 3-4 shift rails, but not to the 5-r rail. My guess is the shift arm came out of the rail somehow and that fork is still in reverse. No amount of jiggling or pressure will get it back into th3 "reverse" position again. A friend told me to pull the reverse sensor and try to push the rail back to neutral. Im gonna try that when it isnt drizzly outside

That's basically what I was thinking but if it happened once its likely to happen again.

I doubt you'll have much luck through the reverse switch hole. You'll just see a solid rail with nothing to push against. You would need to pull the reverse check mechanism to get a good purchase on the shift rail. The little screws that hold that in like to shear off.

 

On the older transmissions there was a bolt that held the selector arm to the shift rod. If that came loose it might cause this kind of problem, but the only way to get to the bolt was through the top access plate.

 

On the newer transmissions they ditched the top access plate, and IIRC they redesigned the selector shaft and arm to be a one piece deal and did away with that bolt. I'm pretty sure that to remove the rear case you have to remove the reverse check mechanism to allow the shift selector arm to swing out away from the forks on the ends of the rails.

I'd try removing the reverse check first if possible. Soak the bolts wih PB for a few days before trying to remove them.

The bolts are well oiled at this point lol, I bought it like this, previous owner just told me that 4th and 5th are out, so to hell with this trans. Any chance a awd 1.8 trans will hold the power? I've been told that the 1.8 and 2.2 awd trans' are the same besides gear ratios, and we've ran a 2.2 budget turbo build on a stock 2.2 trans for quite some time with lots of abusive driving. No problems so far.

I seem to remember reading the only difference in the 1.8 and 2.2 trans was the 5th gear ratio. Final drive should be 3.90 on both, almost all of those had the same 1-4 ratios.

 

I'd run it.

 

Time for some exploratory surgery! See just how many gears are eaten to bits in there!

The trans is free at this point and the car only cost 1300 so im game lol