Bizarre Partial Manual Transmission Failure, Can I Save It?

[Fastback86]

Just acquired a VIN A '92 Grand Am with Quad4 HO and 5-speed manual transmission. Not a Fiero, I know, but there are a couple people here with Grand Am and Quad4 experience, so I'm asking anyway. Drove it 400 miles home yesterday and everything was peachy. Parallel parked it and everything last night. Went out to the car this morning and it will no longer engage 5th or Reverse. The shifter isn't restricted in any way, it still has full range of motion, it's just that when you try to select 5th or Reverse, it's actually selecting 3rd or 4th. 1-4 gears all work fine.

Dug into it a bit a lunch today and found that if I reached down in the engine bay I can manually place the transmission in 5th or Reverse with ease, then get in the car and drive away fine in that gear, so there doesn't appear to be catastrophic internal damage. It's as if the Select cable magically shrunk overnight. It will pull the selector arm over enough to engage 1st and 2nd, but go the opposite way to get 5th or Reverse and it won't push the arm far enough to engage either of those gears, grabbing 3rd or 4th instead as if you're not actually pushing the shifter over to the right despite the fact that you are. There doesn't appear to be any kind of adjustment on the arm on the transmission as there is on the Fiero Muncie 4-speed, so it's not a matter of simply adjusting the cable to take up the slack, unless there's an adjustment point I'm unaware of. The arm on the transmission has a very slight amount of play, less than 1/8 of an inch, and all the connections at the transmission and at the shifter are solid. As I said, it's as if the Select cable somehow shrank to the point where it won't push the arm far enough to reach 5th and Reverse.

It's the damnedest thing I've ever seen. I parked the car using the Reverse gear last night a 9:30 with no issue, then this morning at 7 am it no longer engages those two gears. Has anyone ever even heard of this before? My 4-speed Fiero fell out of adjustment one time, but that's the closest I've ever come. I talked with the shop that used to maintain this car before I acquired it and they serviced it for a hard shifting issue about a year and a half ago. According to their notes, lubing the cables and connections solved the problem at the time, but they suspected an internal transmission problem?

I can't even find replacement cables online, unless someone knows a good source. Fiero cables wouldn't work by chance, would they (I know replacements of those exist, oddly enough)? I could hope and pray for a manual transmission Grand Am at the junk yard, but my odds aren't good, and who knows how long a junkyard cable would last. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

[befarrer]

Is there a cable adjustment in the shifter? My tranny is from the exact car you have, but I cant help you with this problem. I doubt Fiero shifter cables will work, they come out of the shifter the wrong side, come to the tranny the wrong side, and are 3X longer. I wonder if there is a bushing or something loose on your select cable?

[Fastback86]

Is there a cable adjustment in the shifter? My tranny is from the exact car you have, but I cant help you with this problem. I doubt Fiero shifter cables will work, they come out of the shifter the wrong side, come to the tranny the wrong side, and are 3X longer. I wonder if there is a bushing or something loose on your select cable?

I dug around both ends of the cable, both at the shifter and at the transmission and couldn't find any place to adjust it, which I thought was rather odd because it was exceedingly simple to do on the Fiero. Don't know how I forgot about the Fiero cables going out the wrong side of the shifter, that's pretty elementary. It seems the cables aren't specific to the Grand Am, that I can use any cables off any Quad4/282 (I'm pretty sure that's what it is) car like the Cavalier, etc., but no one seems to carry replacements. I'm betting my odds won't be good at the junkyard either.

[Emc209i]

Quad4/282 (I'm pretty sure that's what it is)

Should be an HM 282 with a hydraulic throwout.

I don't know what to suggest. I tore a 282 down not long ago because the speedometer gear dropped into the case and blasted into pieces, some of which lodged between the 5/R gear arm. I'd have to agree that it sounds like a cable issue that you're having.

[jelly2m81]

Unhook the cables from the transaxle and see if you can select all gears, if you can you probably have a bad cable.

[Fastback86]

Unhook the cables from the transaxle and see if you can select all gears, if you can you probably have a bad cable.

All 5 forward gears and Reverse can be selected manually at the transaxle. I'm still not sure how the cable could have gone bad overnight, or how it could've shrank, but it would certainly be nice if that were the case since it'd be the cheapest and easiest solution (barring some kind of adjustment I haven't figured out yet).

[Series8217]

When you manually shift it into the unreachable gears, the cables are still connected right? So what is happening inside the car? Does the shifter move further or does it not move at all?
Did one of the clips that secure the fixed cable end come off, so the cable shroud moves with the cable until it jams, and then the cable starts to move?

[Fastback86]

I've manually selected 5th and Reverse with the cables connected and disconnected without trouble. With the cables connected, the shifter goes to its normal position for that gear. The shifter's range of motion is not impeded as far as I can tell. The cables are securely anchored under the center console, I'll have to dig deeper to see if they've somehow come loose from an anchoring point elsewhere.

[Shaun41178(2)]

prob is with the shifter itself, or the cables. Make sure that the brackets on the tranny didn't crack and are flexing.

[Nashco]

We had a really hard time with cables on our Achieva SCX racer. They are really horrible quality cables, they bend much easier than the Fiero ones do. It's also a very common problem, we found, because not only did it happen to us, but only about 25% of the junkyard cars had cables that weren't junk. Check to make sure all of the ends of the cables are in tact (bushings not gone/destroyed), all of the cable housings are in good shape (not cracked, properly secured at each end), and that the cables aren't bent (at the ends, between the housing and the cable end).

Bryce

[Fastback86]

We had a really hard time with cables on our Achieva SCX racer. They are really horrible quality cables, they bend much easier than the Fiero ones do. It's also a very common problem, we found, because not only did it happen to us, but only about 25% of the junkyard cars had cables that weren't junk. Check to make sure all of the ends of the cables are in tact (bushings not gone/destroyed), all of the cable housings are in good shape (not cracked, properly secured at each end), and that the cables aren't bent (at the ends, between the housing and the cable end).

Bryce

That's quite encouraging, thank you. I'll have to check the junk yard cars close for usable cables. I'm not thrilled with the idea of replacing one 18 year old cable with another, but I can't find new replacements anywhere.

[Fastback86]

Update for those following along.

Hit the junkyard Sunday with little success. Couldn't find a single Quad4 with a manual, so I settled for a Cavalier with a 2.0 and a manual. Turns out the Cavalier uses an identical cable, except it's 4 inches shorter than the GA cable. Glad I only spent $4 on it, though I'm a little disappointed because this cable appeared to be an almost-new replacement piece, not an 20 year old original.

In the process of discovering that particular discrepancy, I also identified the source of my problems which, thankfully, is indeed a bad cable. I didn't have a camera with me, so you'll have to use your imaginations. At the transmission end of the cable, the outer sheath of the cable had pulled out of the cylindrical housing that mounts to the bracket on the transmission. When pulling on the cable to reach 1st or 2nd, or while at rest going for 3rd or 4th, the select cable was fine. Exert pressure on the cable to push the spring-loaded transmission arm over to 5th or Reverse, though, and it would instead push back on the loose sheath, taking away the extra half-inch or so of travel at the arm needed to get it to 5th or Reverse.

Since I had no replacement but had the bad cable out, I went for broke on a Fiero-worthy band aid. I was able to work the sheath back into the nipple on the cylindrical housing, then crimped down the nipple as best I could with a pair of channel locks. The cable also had a 2 foot long piece of rubber tubing on it, which I assume acts as a heat shield since it runs so close to the exhaust manifold. I worked the tubing up the cable a few inches and over the nipple, then threw a pair of hose clamps on it, one over the nipple and one half an inch down over the sheath/cable. Cranked em down good and tight to hold it and a drive around the block confirmed that the band aid worked. No telling how long it will hold before the cable works its way back out, but thankfully 5th doesn't get used that often and I can try my best to avoid having to use Reverse.

Still haven't had any luck at all finding replacement cables, so I'll have to keep hitting the yards until I get lucky. If any of you sees a Q4 with a 5spd in the local yard, grab it.

[cactus bastard]

I went for broke on a Fiero-worthy band aid.

Heh, I had a throttle cable seize up on me a couple of years ago, and replaced it with galvanized aircraft cable inside of syn-flex with a few simple brass fittings. Cost me all of $10 or so and I never did bother fixing it properly.

[lucky]

It's been a couple years, but when I was at Advance we had a really good selection of manual shifter cables.

[CincinnatiFiero]

I poked around when he told me about this, AAP (my go to since you told me to go there for something I couldn't find a year ago, and they had, thanks btw) and no-one sells the damned things

http://shop.advanceautoparts.com/webapp ... ment+Parts

[lucky]

ya, sorry. ran the info myself after I posted that. when I replaced the cables in my 86gt, I had them from a warehouse to my hand in 12hrs; didn't think the grand am ones would be harder to get.

[Fastback86]

ya, sorry. ran the info myself after I posted that. when I replaced the cables in my 86gt, I had them from a warehouse to my hand in 12hrs; didn't think the grand am ones would be harder to get.

You and me both. Figured GA would be way easier.

[Nashco]

That's why I said about 25% of the junkyard cables were junk, that's the only place we could find them. Unfortunately, while 25% of the cars had some usable cables, a VERY small percentage of the N-Bodies in the U-pull junkyards have manual transmissions. Fortunately, we were looking in Detroit yards, which have a disproportionate number of N-Bodies to look through compared to most parts of the country (like California).

Here's another idea. Go to car-part.com and look for a transmission for your car near your location. Start at the yards closest to you and work your way down the list, calling and asking if they have shift cables for your application. Most yards will have pulled the powertrain, put it on a shelf, and already scrapped the car with cables in it. HOWEVER, some yards will still have the car and can go check on them out in the yard for you. Ideally, they'll be close enough that you can drive and check the cables out, but it's not likely. I've had luck doing this with odd parts (like a pedal set for a very specific application, found by looking for transmissions that went with the pedal set and calling yards that had the right trans).

If you haven't already, also go to quad4forums.com and post a wanted ad. Most of those guys won't let their cables go if they have spares, but it's worth a shot if somebody feels pity and wants to make a few bucks on their spare parts.

Bryce