Hi All, My 1998 Legacy Outback blew the head gasket last month. It's just over 100,000 miles even though it's pretty old.
I took it to my local mechanic. They've worked on the car before and they're generally pretty reliable. They fixed the head gasket (it took a long time to get the work completed, but that's another story). While they had the car, or when they did the repair second gear went out. I haven't driven the car yet because I haven't picked it up from the mechanic. He described it as if there were something stopping the shifter from going into place.
I talked to another mechanic and he said that if replacing the head gasket and reinstalling the motor were to cause any transmission issues it would probably just mess up the whole transmission, not just one gear. What do you think?
It's possible that the gear was close to going out, though I never noticed any trouble at all.
The mechanic did say that if I took the car to another garage and they said he caused the problem then he would pay to have it fixed. He is a stand-up guy. I'll give him that. My question is, what are the chances he caused this problem? I don't know if I want to bother having the transmission fixed if it's going to come out of my pocket. The car isn't worth that much.
TIA
Edit:
Since posting this I've talked to a couple of mechanics. Both of them think it's very unlikely that pulling the motor from the front could cause 2nd gear to get blocked. Either it would mess up the whole transmission, or it's something unrelated. I'm going to pick up the car tonight and see just how bad it is.
New question, what might be the cause of 2nd gear being blocked?
