MK2 2002 Ford Ranger 4x4 with missing 5th gear

[cologne2792]

Driving my 163,000 mile Ranger home yesterday, changed into 5th and it was absent.

Goes into 5th ok, will fall out with no load but engages perfectly normally and just thinks it's in neutral.

Put it into 5th when stationary, let the clutch in and you can stall it.

1st to 4th were fine until 30 minutes ago and now sound rather noisy. 4th is fine.

Any thoughts or experiences ?

[GreenV8S]

Possibly something wrong with the 5th gear selector? It would be on a separate rail so could easily fail without directly affecting the other gears. I had a vaguely similar problem with a broken fork where it would go into gear but not come out. Not too bad as long as I didn't mind only using 5th gear and didn't try selecting any others. Yours sounds as if it might be failing to go into gear except when stationary but still coming out of gear OK, which is sort of the opposite problem but might still trace back to a broken selector/fork.

[paintman]

Don't know which box it uses but loss of 5th gear & reverse is a known issue on the R380 gearboxes used by Land Rover & is due to the layshaft extension shearing off.