I was just driving along and 5 gear no longer drove the car so i down shifted to 4th and it was fine...When I came to a stop I didn't have 1,2,3,5 or reverse but 4th worked fine and I had to limp home (110 miles) on 4th gear///What the heack is going on???

 

My guess is that if you would drain the oil out, you'd find a bunch of metal bits. The remains of a grenaded bearing. You need a rebuild or a new (to you) transmission.

 

While driving my 1987 Dakota in 5th gear (manual transmission) the gear quit driving the car so I down shifted to 4th and it run fine till i stopped.. Now i don;t have 1,2,3,5 or reverse but it still goes in 4th and i had to limp home (120) miles in 4th gear....what could be the problem?

 

Sorry if I'm a bit grumpy this morning, but . . .we heard you the first time.

The reason I am saying that it's a bearing is that when a bearing goes out, one of the shafts inside the trans doesn't align correctly, so you may have one or even 4 gears still available, but you also lose gears because they aren't meshing.

The reason I say you may need to get another trans instead of rebuilding the current one is that if it grenaded fairly catastrophically and you continued to drive it, chances are your trans munched up bits of bearing and damaged the shafts, shift dogs, and gear teeth.

Bottom line is that in the real world, a 27 year old truck with a toasted trans is probably a parts truck. Not economically feasible to fix--especially if you don't do your own work. If you do decide to fix it or have it fixed, plan to spring for a new clutch assembly--might as well as you have the trans out anyway.

 

Sorry....couldn't resist.

Good luck getting your truck sorted out...Brian gives good advice, I know nothing.