thanks, every shop wanted at least 4k to rebuild even though they had no clue what was wrong. couldn't have done it w/o reading contributions from this site.

shout out to you, RRPhil, TriX5, civdiv, etc.

It wasn't really that hard at all, and when I have some spare time, I'll post a full recap to pay it back.

Cheers!

faranks - I don't mean to dig up old threads again but what was the solution to your problem?

yah sorry, I still intend to do a full write-up, just finishing another quarter of engineering school...
swissfrank...you were 100% right! I finally got around to messing with that plate on the side of the tranny, it was the problem.

there is no real adjustment however that I could see, only the fact that one of the two mounting holes for the plate is slightly eccentric, but did not give quite enough play to make a difference due to a mount locating pin that I contemplated breaking off.

so what I did was leave one of the bolts out, and then I had enough play to rotate it just enough so that reverse works at all times. not sure how it got out of range, maybe I was not delicate enough when moving the case around or cleaning.

oh well. thanks again for your spot-on diagnosis!