Something weird happened to our 2007 EX manual transmission yesterday, it would not allow us to select gears 1 or 2, we only had 3,4,5 and reverse as options.

The shifter, while in neutral would not allow movement to the left of the vertical line between 3 and 4. It was like this for multiple stop (and reversals) and goes on a rural road.

Finally I was able to force the issue by rapidly oscillating the shifter right and left along the neutral plane and it seemed to gradually move further left with each stroke until we were finally able to select 1 and 2. Now, it is as if the problem never happened.

Do we have a pending problem here or is it something that may never show up again?

 

That's really strange. I would wait it out and see if it happens again. Perhaps the shift cable snagged (not sure how) or something. I'm not too experienced with cable shifters yet though so take it for what it's worth.

 

Thanks for the input, I was not aware there were cables involved, I thought it was a shifter mounted on top of the transmission or such.

 

To be honest, I was hoping it had a standard "old-style" shift linkage when I first read your question. If that were the case, it would have probably been loose bushings and/or mounts causing the problem (easy to diagnose, easy/cheap to fix). The cable shifter is a little more difficult to diagnose.

Let us know if it happens again.