[brap999]

After nearly 8 hours fighting the T5 tail housing, I finally figured out what was wrong. I found a thread on another site where a guy said he gave the fifth gear assembly a light smack towards the driver side of the transmission and it all popped into place.

I tried this but with no luck, and am not comfortable hitting on the transmission too hard even with a rubber mallet.

So I started playing with the shaft on the on the opposite side of 5th gear and connects to 5th gear, and discovered it was pushed in towards the front of the transmission. This was causing the 5th gear assembly to lock into a funny position. I pulled back on shaft (pulling the shaft towards the rear of the transmission) and it all freed up.

Once I tried putting the tail housing back on everything went smooth!

Apparently it puts fifth gear into a weird position causing it to hit the side of the tail housing. This needs to be all freed up in order for everything to fall into place.

I hope this helps others with this problem who might find this thread in the future. There isn't a lot of posts about it on the internet.