Rookie transmission question, broken first repair Options

[Charles Freeborn]

My transmission is reported to have a broken 1st gear. Not uncommon.
I've taken one pass through the EvilWerks videos (I bought the series) and as best as my memory can provide - the 1st and reverse gears are under the outer cover and not nested inside with the rest of the gear clusters. So, here's the question: If the damage is limited to just those components can one do a diagnosis and repair without cracking open the whole gearbox? Obviously if upon inspection things like synchros, etc are worn I'm all in, but this trans is reported to be sound other than the broken 1st, but yeah, race car...
Any transmission repair advice welcomed.
Thx.

[brant]

Just advice

I wish I had followed the advice myself earlier

On our 901 we would loose the intermediate plate bearing every other year
And have to rebuild it

My builder says the cost ratio for reliability and horse power is around 210 hp to switch to a 915 tranny

We are close to that but just shy off 200hp

So the third or 4th time we had to rebuild we added a trans cooler and the billet intermediate plate

We also put a temp sensor and gauge on it

We were hitting really high temps. 240 plus on the track
With cooling it went to 200

I’m sure the billet plate helped me too
But I give the majority of credit to the cooling

I think I’m on the 4th year of this box with cooling and have had no problems yet

So I would recommend cooling for any one close to 200 hp on a track car