Well, I found what broke reverse in my tranny. I pulled it all out this weekend to swap in the replacement and found this in the oil pan:


This is 1 of 2 oil transfer tubes between the valve body and the body of the trans. They're just pressed in, but not real tight. They're made to pop in and out to remove the valve body from the tranny. It looks like I blew one out that was used for reverse. These point down, so the loud "pop" I heard when it happened was probably the tube hitting the bottom of the pan.

To prevent it from happening again, I made up a simple retainer using a threaded hole already in the tranny, and a small piece of 1/8" strap.


The un-retained end seats about an inch deep and it's not coming out unless the retained end does. I'm not entirely sure why this happened though. It's possible it was user error.

When in reverse, the solenoids are normally in the 1st gear position. When this happened, I was cruising down a sand road in 2nd and stopped to do a quick backup and stomped on it without making sure to shift back to 1st gear again. The manual doesn't say one way or the other if you can do this, but I've done it before just to see and all seemed well. I'm guessing that because I stomped on it in reverse, something may have over-pressurized somewhere and popped the tube out.

It may be that the tube popping out prevented more severe damage. I just don't know though, so I'm putting in the retainer and the new shifter will ensure the solenoids are in 1st gear when going into reverse.

--Dan