Triumph Repair: 1972 Spitfire Transmission, forward gears, rimmerbros

Question
I have a 1972 Triumph Spitfire.
I have owned it for 5 years with no transmission problems. Starting about a week ago I have been havng just a little bit of a problem finding reverse. After a slight play with the shifter it always engages. The problem is when I go back to the forward gears they seem hard to get into. If I just sit in place and play with the shifter back and forth through 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th gears it seems to loosen back up and shits freely....like a brand new transmission. The tranny shfts wonderfully unless I decide to go into reverse and I have to go through the process of manipulating the gears to loosen the forward gears up again.
Last year I replaced the Shift-Lever Pin Kit(springs, bushings and gasket from the lever to the tranny)  and this year I replaced the tranny fluid. That is the only 2 things I have done to the transmisssion. Could it be something as simple as low tranny fluid?

Answer
Dane,

Low fluid could cause problems with actually sliding the parts into mesh... but to me it sounds like something in the shift lever or the selector fork setup might have a bit too much free play.

Since you installed the shifter lever bushings that'd be a good place to start.  Make sure all the pieces are in place without excessive free play.

If you still have the original three rail trans there is a selector lever at the trans end of the shift extension that engages the three gear selectors (1-2, 3-4, Reverse).  If that lever is loose on the selector shaft then you'd have trouble getting things to line up.

Some of the vendors have good parts schematics in their manuals that will better illustrate what I'm trying to say.  A good online vendor is Rimmer Brothers in the UK (www.rimmerbros.co.uk), they've got great .gif pictures of the various parts of the car.

I guess at very least it's time to pull the trans tunnel cover again and check on things.  

Cheers,

Jim