i just picked up a 96 civic 2 door for dirt cheap. the transmission does not want to come out of the gear that its in. (which i think its third) if the shifter is in neutral its still in 3rd when i release the clutch. it wont come out of gear but the shifter still moves. i checked the shift linkage and it seams to be fine. any ideas to whats wrong?

 

is the bitch pin that connects the shift linkage to the transmission broken or missing? it's possible your linkage is sliding around on the collar sticking out of the tranny. In third gear the collar on the tranny would be extended out all the way. maybe check it out. otherwise i'm not sure what it might be mechanically.

 

drive it in third

 

Lubricate the shift linkage. Many points can become seized if not used frquently/ years.

 

if it actually had a little bit of power i would.

 

some transmissions are bad about breaking shifter forks. you may have one of these. i don't know if i ever learned which had the problem but i know the 96-00 ex was the stronger one..

i think you'd have to pull the trans out and apart to se for sure...

 

92-95 aluminum forks

96-00 steel forks

 

When i was 16, same issue happened in my integra. One day i put it in 3rd, and it stayed there. I could move the shifter around from 3rd to neutral and to 4th, but would always be in 3rd gear (downtown during rush hour was real nice). At the time, i had know idea what to do, so i took it to a shop. Apparently the only thing that was wrong was the clutch. So a new clutch and way to much money later and my car drove fine.