Daughter had been driving my 88 Sammy and it locked up in 3rd. gear. Her boyfriend looked it over and tried to get it to shift out of 3rd with no success. Not sure if he stripped it by trying to force it into another gear or not but when I got there the shifter would act like it was in neutral move side to side (actually further than 5th gear without engageing the gear or getting out of 3rd)..

So I removed the shifter knob, boot & unfastened the bolts & pulled out the shifter & lubed it good.

Put it back on again and it worked but its still acts like it wants to go way beyond 5th gear when you shift to 5th. Any ideas what might be wrong or what could have caused the problem.?

Do a search for 'shifter sheet' thats most likely to be your problem.

Sounds like a broken shift pin to me.

Cwkick

Well like I said its working now, just don't want to get out somewhere and have that happen again.  I thought someone caused the damage, not going to blame anyone but I didn't think it would just break by itself.

Daughter had been driving my 88 Sammy and it locked up in 3rd. gear. Her boyfriend looked it over and tried to get it to shift out of 3rd with no success. Not sure if he stripped it by trying to force it into another gear or not but when I got there the shifter would act like it was in neutral move side to side (actually further than 5th gear without engageing the gear or getting out of 3rd)..

So I removed the shifter knob, boot & unfastened the bolts & pulled out the shifter & lubed it good.

Put it back on again and it worked but its still acts like it wants to go way beyond 5th gear when you shift to 5th. Any ideas what might be wrong or what could have caused the problem.?

This may help:

http://www.zukiworld.com/month_090102/feature_hawkshifterpinfix.htm

At the very least there are big pictures that can be used for discussion.

-Eric