I'm looking at buying a 96' Blazer with the 4.3L and from what the current owner told me one day when him and some friends were running it pretty hard it stopped shifting. I'm pretty sure he said that the shifter won't even move at all. I just want to know if it's something worth while to buy or if the fix is going to be too difficult or costly to be worth my while. So does anyone know what the problem or fix could be? Thanks in advance.

 

BUMP. Any idea? Someone on another forum mentioned that they thought it could be a broken shift fork?

 

Does the truck move? Is it stuck in gear and can you tell what gear?

 

Umm not sure since I haven't seen it yet. I'm pretty sure that it's in gear. anddoesmove. But I have no clue which gear at the moment. I will be able to take a good look at it in like a week or so. But before i do that I was just hoping to get a few good ideas of what the problem was and how much parts will cost, I can install them myself I just need to find the problem.

 

Try and see if the truck will come in and out of gear when it's shut off...

 

I wouldn't buy it. It could need synchros or more parts. If you want it, offer him half what he wants. Your looking at alot of money to spend on the unknown.

 

Seeing as how you can pull a tranny from a yard for pretty cheap, I'd go for it. Just go at it expecting to replace the transmission. Other than being heavy, manual transmissions are a sinch to swap. Plan on replacing the clutch while you have the trans down.

 

I don't think that the shifter will move at all even with the engine off. I had someone else who had a Chevy truck tell me they had what seemed to be a similar problem when they were running theirs hard, and that was that the ball/selector assembly popped out of where it was supposed to be and got stuck. And that for him all he had to do was line everything back up again and reinstall the shifter but said that things could be bent or broken.

 

It's possible that it could just be bent or broken, but if they're selling it at a dirt cheap price, and everything BUT the transmission is good, then it'll be an easy fix... even if you've gotta replace the whole shebang... Hopefully they didn't run it that hard all the time...

 

Find out if any tranny work was performed prior to this. If the shifter was removed from the tranny and it was not in neutral you can run into a problem like this.