Well hopefully the tranny oil fixes it.

The odd thing is that it just slots into 2nd over and over, no problem at all from any RPMs, upshift & downshift. Then all of a sudden it feels completely blocked. Then it'll work like a charm again for days.

This is the other part I'm wondering about:
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1213631792.jpg

A while back, someone mentioned in another thread that the fork sometimes gets a bit loose and can wiggle around, causing weird intermittant issues. Any thoughts on this?

You can check that when you change the oil. It's unlikely.

Tranny mileage?

bah! I'm grasping at straws. I just want to check every possible cause before I consider dropping the engine & transmission. Doing so would be a real pain... dad is 600 miles away so his car would have to sit in my garage all winter. That's why it may be easier to rebuild a used one, or buy a rebuilt one.

80k miles

That's exactly the fork I thought you were talking about. It's very unlikely that's causing your problem - once you open that plate and look at it in there, you'll see why. It's not the fork that gets loose, it would be #2 on that diagram, which is connected to the shift rod. The fork (#6) just acts as the fulcrum on the lever of #2, allowing you to put pressure on it so it moves the shift shafts.

Now that I've done it twice, I would never again be frightened of an engine drop. The first time was a bit of a pleasant surprise in that nothing went really wrong (some small oil spills were the biggest issue), and this time it took less than 2 hours, including cleanup, which was minimal. Remember that even if you buy another tranny, you'll still have to pull the engine to install it, and there are several potential pitfalls on reinstallation.

One option might be to drop the engine at your dad's place and take the tranny back home with you over the winter. It's a bit heavy (maybe 200 lbs) but it's definitely lift-able. I pulled it out at my folks' place where I store the car over the winter, drove it home, then probably loaded and unloaded it into various cars and trucks 5 or 6 times. You can position the engine back underneath the car and leave it raised over the winter while you repair the tranny, so it doesn't take up any more space than it would just storing the car normally.