Let me preface by saying I hope this is in the correct thread, if not let me know. I looked around a bit and this seemed to fit best.

I have a '99 XLT, 3.0L V6 DOHC Flex fuel 5 speed manual with ~195k miles. It is my daily driver and I put ~400 miles highway on it a week driving, average trip for work/school is 65miles one way. Last week I was arriving at the end of the morning drive in and exiting the highway. Shifted to N fine, had to force it into 3rd after the turnaround. On my final turn it would not go into any gear, coasted to a safe stop. Killed the engine, tried shifting and still would not go, no grinding or stalling. After a few minutes of it sitting it went into first and lurched when I started it. Tried again, went into gear and started fine. Drove the last .25 mile fine, shifted like normal, no issues on way home either. Next day it drove fine in the morning, but I had to force it into gear with a little muscle when I was leaving the parking lot on way home. A few days of nothing and then had to stop again at the end of my trip down before I could shift. To summarize, intermittent resistance when shifting, hot or cold, sometimes can be forced into gear, other times needs to sit a few minutes, no issues going into N. Shift normal afterwards, never any grinding, slippage, stalling or other issues. I had the transmission fluids flushed in January at a shop I trust.

I checked the fluid level, cold engine, and when I opened the fill bolt fluid came out so I assume I have a good fluid level. Not sure where to go from here. The fact that it's happened both hot and cold and the fluid level is good tells me that it probably isn't a bad seal leaking at high temps. There's also no signs of drip when parked even for extended periods.

Any thoughts on where to check next, or something I've overlooked would be appreciated.

S/F
RR

 

Welcome to the forum

Manual transmissions are setup so only 1 gear selection can be made at a time
Your trans has 6 gears(with reverse) so will have 3 shift rods, each can engage 2 gears

Only 1 shift rod can be moved at a time and that shift rod must come back to Center(neutral) before another shift rod can be moved.

Neutral is when all shift rods are lined up in the Center

The shift rods can be viewed by pulling out the shifter, MAKE SURE IT IS IN NEUTRAL!!!

Each will have roll pins that hold shift slot and shift forks to each shift rod, if you force shifter into a gear you can shear off a roll pin which makes getting it back to neutral hard, so other gears can't be engaged

You do have to pull the trans out to fix this, but only need to remove the top plate.


Might be a clutch issue but you would have mentioned that it is hard to get into gear when stopped pretty much every time, wouldn't come and go

 

Also a clutch issue generally wouldn't present itself when the engine is off. Should be relatively easy to select a gear without releasing the clutch if everything else works correctly once the engine is shut down. Agreed on the shift cover removal.

 

Thank you both. I'll pull it off this weekend and take a look. Would it be easy to spot if a shift rod or roll pin is bad?

 

Yes, use a flat blade screwdriver to try and move each shift rail forward and then back

Shifter MUST BE in neutral BEFORE you pull it out, so block the wheels

 

Pulling out the shifter and the bushing was in pieces and the ring was misshapen (pic attached). I can replace these easy enough but my concern is would this be the single cause of my issues, or could whatever is going on also have caused these to break. In other words, is it worth replacing them and seeing if that's it, or should I look deeper for something larger?

 

There's a prety reasonable chance that those smaller pieces went too deep down the sides and/or piled on top of each other.

Short version, you need to replace those anyway - the part Ron is talking about is below all that so it won't have caused/been caused by it.