I finally was able to pull out my trans and popped the cover off to look inside. I dont know much about trans' but i can tell if something doesnt look rright. My problem was shifting in and out of first and second (third and fourth gear and reverse shifted fine). I noticed that the 3/4 slider (where the shift fork goes into) slides easily into 3 and 4 and there are these thin gold-colored sprocket-looking things that kind of wobble which i think they are supposed to do. Anyways, the first and second slider does NOT move. It was actually stuck in 2nd and the little gold sprocket thing is like totally fused/stuck and does not freely move like the 3/4 ones do. So the slider is very stuck, i have a felling it would move if i tapped it with a hammer but im not going to do that.
Also, the little magnet in the bottom of the case was just caked with silverish poweder with a few small chunks.. but i dot see where it came from. all the gears are in great shape besides the tiny scuffing on the reverse gear.
Anyone have any ideas about what is gong on?

anyone? I just pulled with trans apart in sections. I left the main gear cluster together because i dont have a diagram to put it back together. But i noticed the blocking ring on the 1/2 side is just jammed between the second gear and synchro assembly. the 'slider' on that synchro is just totally tight and can only be moved by tapping on it with a small hammer. It also looks like three corners of the counter gear assembly (where the reverse idler engages) are chipped off. and also one of the teeth on 'sprocket' gear on the third gear is broken off. I guess i need new parts?

Any thoughts would be great. I dont want to spend hundreds having my worthless saginaw rebuilt professionally, but my uncle works at a place called Cottman's trans missions so maybe he could help, but im sure he doesnt want to look at a trans. when he is off work.. Id like to do this myself.

For a daily driver the saginaw is ok, but for anything else it's junk. I had the original one in my 78 malibu. I wanted to keep it because there were only 1654 made with a 4 speed. But the 465 hp small block didn't think so. I wound up somehow welding first gear to the shaft and had to drive home in first gear. Anyway, I rebuilt it and put it back in the car, and it broke second gear. So I would suggest, if you are going to expect a lot out of a saginaw, don't do it.

Well, I’m sure you’ve heard from every source now … your Saginaw is junk. Alright, well I’m not going to try and tell you the same. It’s been shown for years that a ST10 or Muncie are far stronger … but a few of us in life, just have to live within a budget too

Anyhow … I will say, you probably don’t want to put much money into your Sag box. So here’s some cheapy solutions.

All your gears with chips, need to be contoured. Round over the broken area with a file or grinder, remove as little as you can. This won’t fix anything, it might very well break again … but it should help.

The slider absolutely has to move on/off the hub! No two ways around this, unless you want permanent 2nd gear. You’re going to have to get it to slide off, and determine what has it locked in place. I don’t remember any small parts that could jam it in place, so I would suspect excess heat has done something with the slider/syncro/hub. So you might want an expert to look at it first, before attempting this … but I say beat it off, preferably a brass or rubber mallet. Once it’s moved … you can either grind/contour whatever has seized it together … or scout for some good salvageable replacement parts.

Anyhow, the broken/chipped teeth … aren’t perfect, but they can suffice. The slider will absolutely have to move, my suggestion is to hammer … but if you were asking, there is not supposed to be any mechanism inside to ‘lock’ it into place.

Saginaw's are not that bad,yes they wont take a lot of abuse from a ground pound BBC but they can take some abuse esp from a mild SBC or very mild 396 BBC.

Back when i was a youngin in high shcool i had a 69 chevelle with 350/300hp with saginaw 4spd & 331 rear from factory.

I owned the car for approx 3 yrs and wore the motor out from just plain abuse of constantctly racing it and winding it up tight while shifting with gas to the floor never letting up untill i hit 4th gear including tons of burnouts too.

Yes the 350/300hp was not a ton of power & trq but the saginaw trany was really abused a lot and never gave me any problems at all.

I rebuilt the motor and then sold it locally to a friend and he ran/also abused it for approx 2 more yrs with no saginaw trany problems and then sold it again and i lost track of it after that.

I have seen other saginaws in cars of people i knew that ldid just fine too but none of those cars had 500hp/500 lbs trq BBC motors either as a saginaw would likely not live long under that extreem pressure becausee THEY WERE NOT DESIGEND FOR it in the 1st palce. Saginaws were a medium duty trans at best and that was what it was desigend for and was the reason GM never put them in their highr hp/trq motored cars.

So with your mild 396 and 262 comp cam i would think if you correctly fixed/rblt you saginaw it could live for many yrs if you didnt abuse like with 5500rpm clutch drops or a lot of power shifting etc.

If you just like to wind her up once in a while using the clutch to shift through the gears with no high rpm clutch drops you should be ok with your saginaw.

Scott

Perhaps Wally or DZAuto will pop in here and give thier advice. It looks like you need a major overhaul.

i jus dont want to spend alot to replace things that dont need to be replaced. Im starting to think about why and when this happened. It seemed to be right after i did my engine overhaul. I just set the trans aside and then installed it after i had the engine in. I remember leaking some oil out of the trans but it didnt seem like a lot. The last i checked about amonth before i pulled the trans, the oil level was right at the bottom of the fill hole. I guess more than i thought might have leaked out. When i pulled it out a couple of days ago, there didnt seam to be a lot of oil in it..maybe a quart or so came out. It might have been run low on oil, i admit. Not intentionaly though.

Typical of sags. The 1-2 synchro hub has a snap ring. This ring breaks off and allows the hub to move around, basically pounding out the bronze rings. The rings will spin out of the key slots and lock the mechanism up. Basically you can get a rebuild kit for it and a new 1-2 synchro assembly and fix it. Sooner or later because of this light duty design it will pound out the snap ring again.

Paul

If I remember correctly that was what happened to mine. Only while assembling did I realize that there was supposed to be a snap ring. When I took it apart there was no snap ring left and the pieces welded everything together.