Busted U joint and broken shift tower...is my tranny shot?

[Fiatlanta]

Driving home the other day and suddenly heard awful metallic clanging and shifter fell through the console. No gears engaging at all. Managed to coast into a parking and took a look underneath...front u joint was shattered, but more or less still in place, not dragging. As it coasted, I continued to hear metallic clanging. Called for wrecker to bring her home.

Upon further inspection, popped shifter console and took out inner boot...what I came to learn is called the shift tower was completely broken. Hard to tell the extent looking down through the console, but I could see a ring and broken edge of the casting cleanly broken. That explains the shifter falling down into the console.

Question is...is the transmission necessarily kaput? How would I ascertain that?

I was already looking at eventually replacing or rebuilding due to third gear popping out occasionally, but wasn't planning on it so soon. Have looked at the various options...leaning towards new Polski or remanned original if it comes to that. But if I can just replace the u joint and tower and get a few more miles out of this one, I'm happy to do that as well.

Thanks for any input.

[seabeelt]

The shift tower bolts onto the gearbox. Failure of the shift tower doesn't necessarily mean transmission failure. The question is, was/is there something in the gearbox that caused the shift tower to fail, or was it just plain metal fatigue. Need to determine that first.

It does seem like a good opportunity to rebuild the tranny, parts are available

[85redpini]

normally this happens when the flex (guibo) joint fails and the driveshaft whacks the extension housing. we normally sell used extension housings. almost impossible that it would hurt the trans.
Jay

[Fiatlanta]

I don't know that I'm up to rebuilding the transmission with my own hands, but I think I'll explore the option of purchasing a rebuilt one. Even if the transmission wasn't damaged in the incident, it had started slipping out of 3rd on occasion, so I knew something was going to need to be done sooner or later. So I change it now rather than next year...I can live with that.