Popping out of first gear

Jshearin18

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I have a 2008 Jeep Wrangler JK manual. Sometimes it will pop out of first gear usually after the first 5-10 minutes of turning it on. All other gears work fine. any suggestions on how to fix it
 
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I have a 2009 and it does this on very rare occasion. Scare me to death every time.
How often is sometimes? I can go a couple months between incidents.
 
It’s not every time I drive it but too frequent for my liking. My Jeep is not my daily driver I drive it once a week or so depends on the weather.
 
My 2008 has never done that, but it only has 75,000 miles on it so maybe it has something to do with the miles it has.
 
I've got over 190K on mine, with me doing about 30k of that. Have you changed the tranny fluid? That would be the first thing I would do. Come to thing of it, I should probably check to see if I did that on this one since I bought it.
 
I believe they changed the 'seal' between the shifter and the tranny due to this occurring. Some have removed the shifter and cut away some of the old gasket/seal. I would just replace it if I went that far though, lol. The early models also seemed to have trouble with teeth breaking off. That's just stuff I found when I had my NSG370.

Tim
 
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I have a 2008JKU also with the same problem, my mechanic told me it was the shift fork that was worn out for 1st gear.
I noticed it only happens when I casually drive and not put it in 1st with a little more force (actually make sure its pushed all the way in).
I haven't fixed it yet but it's next on the list of maintenance!
 
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I have a 2008JKU also with the same problem, my mechanic told me it was the shift fork that was worn out for 1st gear.
I noticed it only happens when I casually drive and not put it in 1st with a little more force (actually make sure its pushed all the way in).
I haven't fixed it yet but it's next on the list of maintenance!
Did the mechanic give you a estimate on what it might cost? I'm honestly nervous to drive it if I'm crossing traffic and it pops out. It definetly takes more force to put it into first compared to other manuals ive drove.
 
I had a manual trans that would regularly pop out of gear when in first. Always startled me so I would just hold it in place till it was time to shift to 2nd. I eventually dumped that tranny. Not saying that’s anyone’s MO in this thread because I’m talking about a totally different Jeep transmission, but relative to the topic.
 
Did the mechanic give you a estimate on what it might cost? I'm honestly nervous to drive it if I'm crossing traffic and it pops out. It definetly takes more force to put it into first compared to other manuals ive drove.
I didn't get an estimate yet, I'll update when I do. Should be in the next week or so
 
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Did the mechanic give you a estimate on what it might cost? I'm honestly nervous to drive it if I'm crossing traffic and it pops out. It definetly takes more force to put it into first compared to other manuals ive drove.
Update, finally fixed it! I had my clutch replaced and transmission torn apart to try and fix the problem. New shif forks installed (they were worn and needed replaced) the problem was still there. The mechanic told me the shifter was probably the problem... Did more research and everything pointed to the shifter, I ordered the B&M shifter.
My mechanic was 1 week out so I decided to try replacing it myself. Overall it was a pretty easy job. Plenty of yourube videos on how to do this.
That was the fix! The new shifter works awesome, 35% shorter throw and definetly goes into gear like a new transmission.
 
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Thank you for the update. What an interesting turn of events. I'll have to look into this, though it's pretty rare that this happens on mine, even at now 200K.
 
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I have a 2008 Jeep Wrangler JK manual. Sometimes it will pop out of first gear usually after the first 5-10 minutes of turning it on. All other gears work fine. any suggestions on how to fix it
I had a 2008 JK that used to jump out of first gear and my permanent fix was I traded it in on a 2014 JK 5 speed auto. Loved the big jump in horsepower.
 
Interesting enough, I watched a video by a gentleman on YouTube who had an early gen of JK (07-2011) and he remedied the issue by installing a new shifter. Must be the fix for that manual pop-out in the earlier JK's.