Change The Gearbox Or Change The Car?

[Guest starship]

Now completed just under 250k private miles since I had the car from new, regularly serviced, but no major problems other than lots of tyres, lots of drop links and a few lower engine stabilisers, a couple of repairs to the gear linkage, and the usual flooded control unit under the seat. Replaced the turbo vacuum control pipes - what a difference that made!!

 

And still the original clutch and exhaust!

 

But now I've got gearbox problems, cruching on first and difficulty engaging reverse. Often I've got to move the stick in and out of all the gears three or four times before I can get reverse. I can live with first - just a matter of being gentle and its a silent as the night. But being unable to easily select reverse is a pain ( especially in a hilly area with lots of single track lanes!!) Interestingly it always selects reverse first time if I can get it to roll backwards by a couple of inches.

 

Gear box specialist says that first is a loss of synchro, and reverse is a problem with a synchro indent ring (whatever that is). Estimate is

[Andrew T]

Selector cables can cause problems, but it's usually total loss of gears in a certain plane, i.e. 1/2 or 3/4. crunching into 1st is unlikely to be cables though, and rolling back to select reverse does support box problems rather than cable. If you're pulling the 'box out though it's probably worth replacing the cables.

 

I seem to think gearboxes are available at about

[tim-spam]

Can you select any of the other gears easily when stationary? If first gear synchromesh has worn out, you should still be able to select the gear without crunching, if you wait a second or two for the input shaft to stop turning after pressing the clutch.

 

I strongly suspect you have a dragging clutch, rather than a gearbox problem causing your gear selection difficulties. If you can select first easily when rolling forwards, and reverse easily when rolling backwards, that would point to it being a dragging clutch.

 

As a matter of interest, what were the problems fixed by replacing your turbo vacuum control pipes?

[Guest neil_wiles]

The symptoms you describe are exactly the symptoms i had prior to the clutch finally starting to slip.

 

 

 

Change the clutch and it should be fine.

[Guest starship]

Can you select any of the other gears easily when stationary? If first gear synchromesh has worn out, you should still be able to select the gear without crunching, if you wait a second or two for the input shaft to stop turning after pressing the clutch.

 

I strongly suspect you have a dragging clutch, rather than a gearbox problem causing your gear selection difficulties. If you can select first easily when rolling forwards, and reverse easily when rolling backwards, that would point to it being a dragging clutch.

 

As a matter of interest, what were the problems fixed by replacing your turbo vacuum control pipes?

 

 

Thanks for the idea about the clutch, guess this isn't an easy DIY job. And 240k+ miles is not bad for a clutch.

 

When I had the car from new it would happilly cruise up the motorway hills at 70 (honest) on cruise control, but after about 200K it would't hold the speed on these hills, so much that I had to drop it into 4th just to get to the top! A friend could hear the turbo surging on and off, so I decided it had to be someting to do with the controls. Changed all the vacuum control pipes as the cheapest starting point (with silicone ones off ebay as suggested in this forum), and now it flys up the hills just like when it was new.