Thread: R380 loss of reverse and 5th gear

Hi all. A question for the knowledgeable gearbox people out there. Driving into my shed yesterday, after a nice leisurely drive in the country, I found it hard to find a gear any gear after a short wiggle of the lever no problems into first and put DONKEY (my wife named it. Which is a 2001 130 Defender) away.
Went to take it out this morning and NO reverse......or 5th.1st,2nd,3rd and 4th no problem. Oh no sounds like a lay shaft. But it did it whilst stopped! Maybe a gear selector issue? Quick check of AULRO to see if any other users have had the same trouble. Nearly all search results said BROKEN lay shaft. Not entirely convinced with that result as it is a suffix L (74A) which are meant to be stronger than the older suffix J and K.
So pulled every thing of to gain access to the top of the gear box pulled the shift mechanism and housing off and had a look inside. Noticed the selector shaft yoke pin to be missing. Since this retains the interlock spool, which I presume moves the reverse/5th gear selector. Well my question is would this also cause loss of reverse and 5th?
Anyway I can't see a way of getting selector shaft yoke pin back in (presuming it is somewhere down the bottom of the housing, and in good condition) with the box still in the vehicle. Looks like I will have to take it out, or maybe try to pull the back of the box apart whilst it is still in the vehicle (have read a post on here that another member did this). Now to work out what parts I am going to need to accomplish this. The gearbox has only done 20K I still have my original one on hand as a spare, but it is noisy. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thank you P.J.

It was nothing drastic, just the the selector shaft yoke pin had come adrift for rev/1st. With that missing no selection of either gear. I didn't think it would be the lay shaft as I was stationary when it happened, and it wasn't.
I didn't end up taking the gearbox out to fix it. I fished out the pin with a magnet, removed the selector yoke, both interlock spools retainers which allowed me to move the selector shaft so the yoke pin hole lined up with the hole where the retainer was and just hammered the pin back in. Everything works again.
Has anyone encountered this before? Why do you think it happened? It was very hard to drive the pin back in, allot of force was needed. Hopefully it will stay in place this time. If not ah well, more fun to be had.
PJ