Sandrail with 3 rib bus tranny stuck in gear.

[71camperguy]

I just came home with a sandrail barn find. It was an as is where is deal. Point is had to drag with a winch to get on the trailer. Moisture was abundant where this was and I couldn’t turn the motor. It’s been sitting more than ten years. How can I get it out of gear? Should I just pull the motor since I thought it might be locked up? But again if it was stuck in gear I wouldn’t be able to turn the motor anyway. When we were dragging it up the ramp for a brief moment I saw passengers side tire rotated in the opposite direction of the way we were pulling it. Any ideas before I just totally disassemble this thing. I was told they pulled it in and it was running fine when it was parked 10 years prior.

Thanks for any insight

[oprn]

Yes I had a 002 Bus transaxle that would lock up in two gears at once if you got slap happy with shifting. It was usually 1st and reverse if I recall. The Previous owner had drilled a hole in the side of the case and threaded it for a pipe plug. When it happened he would take a flat blade screw driver and stick it in the hole and flick the shift forks back into place.

I had trouble with that procedure and usually ended up unbolting the two big bolts on the transmission mounting yoke, shift the drive train back, unbolt the nose cone enough to reach in with a screw driver and put the offending shift rods back in neutral. That took about 20 minutes on a wide open sand rail.

After about the third time I found another Bus transaxle.
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[Kizbo]

I acquired a sandrail (for a future project) with a swing axle that's doing the same thing from the previous owners days - I suspect it's caught somewhere inbetween gears as well. It hasn't been priority #1 so I haven't dealt with it yet, but I would imagine that popping off the nose cone would allow you to get the selector forks back to the neutral position.