ZF in two gears?

THe safest thing to do if you're not familiar with transmissions in general and ZFs in particular is to pull the assembly and have an expert look the innards over closely. There are a few metric setscrews that hold the internal shift-levers in place, and if one or more loosen up, you could break something- which cost-to-fix will far exceed the cost of an inspection & minor repair. One do-it-yourselfer recently got involved with this li'l detail, and the red Lock-tite he used to hold a setscrew ran down the shaft and locked up a synchro! Total transaxle disassembly followed....

This will probably not be of any help, but there are 3 u-joints in the shifter shaft between the shift arm and the transaxle. If one comes a little loose, it can slip out of place and make the shifter feel "heavy" and not engage properly. Then when it slips back into place, everything feels OK again.
Make sure the car is shifting OK, then tighten them. The first one is inside the cockpit, inside the center tunnel. Pop out your ash tray and you will be able to tighten it through the hole. The second one is inside the engine compartment, on the driver's side, under the headers, right before the support bearing. The last one is where the shift rod goes into the shifter box on top of the back of the ZF transaxle.
If you get lucky, one of these is loose and allowing movement in the shift rod.
Good luck.
Mooso

Gentleman

Thanks for the timely responses. I pretty sure the u-joints in the shift linkage are OK. It seams a more likely candidate would be the shift forks. Does an inspection on the shift forks require removal of the transmission or just components? Also, is there a shop or individual located in the North Bay Area that has the expertise to perform the inspection?

Thanks again