Thankfully this happened quite literally as I was reversing back in to my driveway today. I stopped and tried to engage reverse and the gearstick immediately went sloppy and won't engage any gears.
A friendly neighbour helped me push the car in to the driveway, had a quick look and there's fluid leaking from the area of the gearbox but doesn't smell or feel like oil, so from a quick search around sounds like it's one of the clutch cylinders that's died and dumped the fluid in to the bell housing, probably the slave cylinder.
Going to call garages in the morning and see who can take it, thought I'd post here though and see if anyone has any thoughts/ideas. From the sounds of things it's a pig of a job to do DIY and expensive in a garage if it is the slave cylinder.
I refer the honourable gentleman to my statement contained in post # 14..
In hindsight I would consider two cable ties looped through each other, one around the lever and the other around the rod. That way the tension could be adjusted in each individually to obtain the best security but maintaining articulation. Not the figure of eight I suggested then.
The double sided version I hope, the black duct tape type would work but wouldn’t look as nice. I found out about the duct tape version when I had the disc carriers from my BMW motorcycle shot blasted and they masked the discs with it to protect them. It took me absolute ages to remove the tape and the adhesive, it found its way into all the cross-drillings, what a pain.
the gorilla black tape is proper decent stuff I had never used it before but ordered a tubeless tyre kit for my road bike that had it in the kit to do inside of the rim with.
Once it’s on it takes some getting off that’s for sure.
According to the AA man he reckons to see the same issue on many makes of cars every other day. He used Gorilla super glue to stick the rubber pipe into the circular then lockwired the two metal arms together to stop it jumping up and off the ball on the gearbox selector arm.
This should be very easy to fix, this is the part that is replaced for short shifter kits. I have linked below a guide on replacing for a short shifter, obviously it will be the same as fitting a oe part.
All sorted today, thanks to all who contributed in this thread and a huge thanks to shop4parts and their always excellent service. Exactly 7 of the 7-10 working days they told me for delivery.
Thanks jackfi for the diagram. Actually took longer to get the old part off than the new one on. Took off the engine cover and the air hose to get a bit of extra room, once the old part was off it took about 5 seconds to clip the new one on.
You've stumbled on one of my pet hates. I work in IT and in the days I was on the helpdesk (thankfully long past!) people were forever moaning about things that were broken and wanted updates but would never tell us when things were fixed so we could close the calls or apply the same fix for other people with the same issue.
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