Reply to "ZF gears jammed upon reassembly"

Adventurous? More like trying to find the easy/cheap way out (I hope)...

I do have the 30-year old Hall ZF tech manual. I studied that a good bit and it appears that the trans and the diff are separate units; during the assembly process the manual has you installing the fully-assembled trans into the fully assembled diff...so I reasoned you could split the two apart in the car.

I had the case separated by about an inch or two, enough to reach in w/ my finger and pic out the broken speedo drive...the bottom half was lying there in plain sight. I then used a punch to knock the top half of the drive, which was still halfway in the drive bushing, down into the pan and plucked that out too. When reassembling, I RTV'd the case halves, which the manual recommends too (the old gasket was of course in pieces). So I hope the sealing issue will be solved (until I pull it back apart, that is).

I think I agree w/ your diagnosis. I pulled the passenger side cover/snap ring/spring off of the gearshift operating shaft. That way I could use a pair of vise-grips to actuate the shaft side-to-side and fore-and-aft to mimic the shifter motion. I was only able to engage reverse. After loosening both hex head slug screws on the pass. side (the ones that are screwed into the shift fork and are accessible from outside, via the small cover), I was able to get some, but not enough, fore-and-aft movement into the forward gears. It's still not enough to positively engage the gears, and when you tighten the slug screws back up you can't engage any forward gears...so you're back to square one.

Before I lift the whole unit out of the car I wonder if there is a way to re-engage that shaft? I doubt it...what do you think?