If it won't go, DON'T force it.

Don't let this happen to you. This is a guy who decided that he could get that gear, if he could just yank a little harder on his shift lever. That's what he did, anyway.
I'm working with The Wrench on the race Beetles that he maintains in order to educate myself a little better -- and cut down on my overhead with my own car -- and every day I see something new. This one was straight out of CSI_Capitol Raceway.
This happened under racing conditions, granted, but if it won't get it when you're street driving your car ... well ... over time, it could look like this inside your own gearbox.
(Give me another three years' apprenticeship time, and maybe I could fix it for ya!)

NOT ENOUGH TORQUE!!!!!

Whats all the red stuff? Was he running AFT fluid in place of trans oil? I've always wanted to try that. High viscosity and no drag or resistance at all. Not for the street, but limited (1/4 mile at a time) race use.

Many of the late Ford/Mustang manual transmissions such as a T5, Tremac etc use ATF.

That ring and Pinion sure took a beating, almost looks like the internals exploded and sent shrapnal through out the gear stack rather than just forcing it into gear

Aw hell, just a bit of 120 grit paper and it will be as good as new !

I've had a tranny grenade on me before. Very loud boom, Car jumped, but keep on rolling. I pulled over on the side of the road.

it was dark, i thought it was the engine.stopped turned the engine off, checked oil - fine. Checked under the car - fine. started it back up - fine. drove it - fine.

went home - fine.

drove it for another few days - fine, except a small "whining noise developed".

jacked it up, looked and saw two 2" holes in the transaxle. no gear oil whatsoever. Only thing stopping them from siezing was i used synthetic that was stuck on the actual gears themselves.

i was amazed at how long i could drive it with *no gear oil* in it. tranny wasn't even toast. i ordered new parts / syncros and case half and it was better than new.

TC, we have no idea what the mystery fluid was, but it was on everything. ATF didn't occur to either of us; we just bled it and threw the chunks away. That whole thing was trash; it's waiting to go into the scrap aluminum guy's truck next week when he comes by.
What a mess. Not a single usable part in the case.

"Not a single usable part in the case."

That heavy duty aluminum side cover looks pretty swell. Same with the spool . . .