I'm sitting at work right now, anxious that I might have damaged my manual transmission on my commute here. I drove like normal and when I needed to downshift to first gear to get into a roundabout right before going onto the highway.
For some reason the shifter would not go into first gear, and I quickly just put it into second gear and had enough speed to clear the roundabout.
When I was cruising in about 80km/h I was curious what had just happened so I pressed down the clutch and tested every gear from 5th down to 1st. Every gear was smooth, but the first gear was still stuck. I tried giving it a bit more force to get it in gear and heard a grinding noise that could banish demons from the gears. I swear I also felt a slightly burned smell immediatly afterwards.
I put it back into 5th and got to my workplace where I knew I would need to downshift again at some point. When I got to a place I needed 1st gear to drive on, I once again tried to get into gear, and this time it succeeded. It was slightly harder to get into 1st the first time I tried, but afterwards it seemed to shift normally through all the gears.
I'm obviously not looking forward to my drive home, and I am curious what may have caused the stuck gear in the first place. I don't know when the tranny fluid was last changed, but could bad fluid be the reason for this issue, and a fluid change prevent it from happening in the future?
And what was the burned smell I could smell when I grinded the gears on the highway?
Car is a 94 Del Sol with 190.000KM on the meter.

Thank you for any advice.

 

You forced it into 1st gear while in motion? wow, hope it was worth it.

 

Curious if you were able to shift into reverse at 80 km/hr?

 

If you're saying the gears grind when you try to shift to reverse with the car stopped, that is a clutch problem first thing to check there is the clutch fluid level.

 

Synchros are fried.

Have a shop tear apart the christmas trees, and replace the synchros, bearings, and rings.