Farmtrac 555DTC - Stuck in gear, can't change gears - How do we fix?

[Chiggerville Farm]

All of a sudden we can't change gears on our Farmtrac 555DTC! Right now it is stuck in 2nd gear. We can manipulate the gear shift handle and even put it in the neutral position, but it is still in gear. We've let the tractor roll forward and tried shifting. Did the same for backward. No dice. Still stuck. We can even put the hi/lo shift handle into the neutral position but the tractor is still in gear.

Does anyone know a way to fix this and to prevent it from happening again?

[firstfruitsfarm]

This happened to my 2wd 555. The cause was clutch failure from bolts backing out because of bad assembly. Same tractor had blowing brake shaft boots because of non-alignment of wet brake disc relief ports. Abominable assembly line supervision and quality control.

[Harry in Ky]

Fixing it is one thing, preventing a repeat failure is another. I am by no means a Farmtrac expert, but it looks to me that this model is a copy of earlier Ford 10/30 series designs to some degree. In the Ford units, second gear and reverse use the same shift rail, fork, and actuating arm within the transmission. I have replaced more than one of the arms over the years because they do break, leaving the second/rev fork in whatever position it happens to be in at the time. The lever moves the rail, so it feels like it's working, but the actual fork and shift collar don't move. If this is your problem, and you shift into another gear, you will be in two gears at once and the trans will be "locked up". If this sounds lik your problem, remove the shift cover and inspect the forks. You can shift the rails/forks with a bar and see what's happening.