I just bought an 87 5 speed pickup. it pops out of first and grinds if you dont hold it in gear. all other gears are fine besides first. any ideas?

 

It could just be that the ball&spring have come out, which is a fairly straightforward fix. I believe you can even do it from outside the transmission through a service port covered by an allen wrench setscrew thing.

More likely, however, the synchronizers are worn out to the point of needing an entire transmission teardown and rebuild.

Unless you are made of money or do a LOT of offroading, I would just live with it. You only spend a fraction of your time in 1st anyway.

 

Bad syncro in the trans. Stop banging gears. Run it till it comes apart or you feel like swapping it out. Nothing you can fix while it is in. You will have to crack her open.

 

Another rant. If you guys would stop downshifting to slow down constantly...and use your brakes...your trans would last twice as long.

 

Wow I always down shift to slow down have been doing it all my life .Just how is down shifting hard on transmissions ??

It is a bearing starting to go in the transmission that just allows the shaft to move enough to pop out of gear.

One of those things keep running it till it no longer works or rebuild or get a used one.

 

I bought the shifter seat and shifter bushing from marlin crawler for $28. I figured for how cheap it was if it fixed my problem i would be set. I have a spare tranny for my truck in the shed just thought i would go the cheap route first

 

Never hurts to try simple and cheap first.