I’m working on a 2014 Jeep Patriot with a manual transmission that suddenly wouldn’t go into 1st, 3rd, and 5th gear. When you lose multiple gears like that, it’s real easy to jump straight to “bad transmission” or “clutch is out,” but I always like to verify the basics first. In the car, I checked what gears still worked and paid attention to clutch feel and engagement—second gear would engage and the clutch pedal felt normal, which told me the clutch and hydraulics were doing their job. From there, I moved to what makes the transmission actually select gears: the shifter cables and linkage. After pulling the air cleaner assembly to get a clear view, I found the issue—one of the shifter cables had popped out of its bracket, so the cable was sliding around instead of holding steady and moving the linkage correctly. I inspected the clip and bracket, played with the clip orientation, and got it locked in the same way as the other cable. Once it was secured, the Jeep shifted into all gears again, and I made sure it wouldn’t pop back out before putting everything back together. The big takeaway: diagnose it step by step, because a simple linkage problem can feel like a major transmission failure.