Hey Volks!

First, thanks to all who lent their time and advise.

Saturday morning, at 11:30 after all the inspection, shaking and rattling 
failed to changed matters I accepted the fact that I was going to have to pull 
the engine and tranny. Oh joy! 

Fast forward 3 hours to about 3pm...

I pulled the nose cone off the tranny and found the problem. 

For those who have never seen the inside of the nose cone/shift housing a 
brief description. In the Bentley Manual the exploded view of the transmission 
in Chap. 6 illustrates this. The shifter rod connects, via the coupler, to 
another rod that goes into the nose and makes a 90 degree bend into a fitting 
in a hinged lever. This lever has 3 ears on it that slide up and down (as the 
rod turns) to engage a notch in one of 3 shift rods. The top on is 3/4, the 
center is reverse and the lowest 1/2. The lever, as the rod is pushed in and 
out, pushes or pulls the rods to engage the selected gear.

What I found was the 1/2 rod pushed in (first engaged) and the lever up in the 
reverse rod's slot. There was no way for the lever to drop into the first gear 
rod and pull it back out. I pulled rod back out and put it all back together. 
Sunday it'll get bolted back in.

Fast forward to Sunday afternoon 3:30pm 

Test drove it and all is well! I'd still like to figure out how the hell what 
I found happened. Just doesn't seem possible...one of life's little mysteries.

Again thanks for all the help!

-Scott

Scott and Maggie Allred 
 '71 Westy, the Wayback Machine -- 
 Seen at http://coyote.accessnv.com/wayback 
 from Las Vegas, NV