Foote transaxle slipping/ skipping in gear

A while back I noticed my foote transaxle started skipping a little while in 6th under a modest load. After going Mudding today the thing barly moves. 4-6 gears are pretty well shot. I havnt taken it apart yet but almost sure its the shifter key . My questions is does anyone know of a good fix for this other than replacing the key. I've had it apart not to long ago when it first started and the key didn't look to wore. Or is it maybe the spring steel part of it that's wore. Your input would be apreciated.

its not hard to swap the keys as for the skipping Im going to guess your looking at a gear situation not a key. If it is driving ok 1-3 then you may have a messed up gear pack or it could be the input gears chewed up and with the reduced load of 1-3 it is able to keep in gear but if your pack starts bouncing around it could cause it to bump out of gear. If all else maybe try tightening the ball bearings in the shift mechanism to see if they will hold it in gear a bit better. or just tear into it and find out!

Before you tear it open, check the woodruf key on the input shaft. It might have broken and can catch itself in low gears but skip in high gears, its happened to me

Thanks for the replys. I will check those things out and let yall know what it is. Hope to have it apart this evening.

Well I finally got a chance to take te transaxle apart tonight. All the gears were still tight and not worn. Pulled the shifter keys out. It was slightly worn. Some chips in it. Other than that I don't see anything else wrong. So I'm thinking about taking a welder and putting some spot welds on it and reshaping them. Maybe make them slightly more steep and maybe flat on the top to give it more surface area in the gears. What yall think. Also thinking about bending them slightly more to give them more spring.

I would suggest not welding your gears. That will make them brittle. I don't think anyone has done this successfully outside of lockers.

I was wondering that or it might loose some of its springyness since its spring steel. Do you have any suggestions on how to fix this or at least make it better? Other than reforming them out of ideas. I can't find any for my transaxle online either

Welding on spring steel nearly never works out. It will kill the temper, and they will therefore not function. Best to just order replacements.

I have ground the edges flat again with success.

I will try filing the edges flat again and bending them to get slightly more pressure inside the gears. If that don't work I may try welding on them just for an experiment to see if it will hold up but if it don't I'll either order new ones or find a new transaxle. Is it very common for the shifter linkage to skip in a transaxle?