Floppy Gear Lever Syndrome

[tone]

Last Weds, the 18th August about 2.30pm, my little 1.4 Tdci 3 Door Fiesta which was brand new in April and has only covered 17456 miles, went into "floppy gear lever syndrome" in other words the gear linkage snapped leaving me, fortunately in neutral.

On the Monday the 16th, I had dropped the car into the local dealer for him to look into poor gear selection

"Nowt wrong with that sir, they always do that. If there was anything seriously wrong it wouldn't select gear" .....yeh right!!

2 days later he was right, when the cable snaps they stop and you end up with a floppy gear lever. When the AA towed me in I had great delight in telling him his prognosis was 100% WRONG

Anyway, the problem is after ringing them every day to get an update the answer was always... "we are still waiting for the parts to arrive sir" ...." excuse me, do you know why they are taking so long, it's only a couple of gear linkage cables"..... "I don't know sir, but I'll check" ... "you mean after 6 days you don't know why".. . "No sir" .... "thanks you've been a great help..would you ring me back and let me know" ... "of course sir"

Friday 27th August 9.15am phone rings... "good morning sir..your local friendly highly efficient Ford Dealer here" ...."who's that then"... "very funny sir,,droll droll, just to let you know that your gear linkage cables are on back order with Ford" .. "right what does that mean".., "well sir, they haven't got any, and they'll be making some especially for you. They don't do that for everybody sir. Unfortunately we haven't got a date yet when that will be, does that help" ..." oh yeh it does, thanks"

Right, what I want to know is, who's got all the gear linkage cables, I only need one but they come in pairs, so who out of you lot out there has been and bought up all the stock of cables and is replacing them at every service.

If you have any spare can you sell me a couple please as I'm missing my little car, and I'm having to drive round in a brand new Renault 1.2 Turbo Dynamique(yeh right)100 bhp shed.

Tone

[Magenta]

Last Weds, the 18th August about 2.30pm, my little 1.4 Tdci 3 Door Fiesta which was brand new in April and has only covered 17456 miles, went into "floppy gear lever syndrome" in other words the gear linkage snapped leaving me, fortunately in neutral.

On the Monday the 16th, I had dropped the car into the local dealer for him to look into poor gear selection

"Nowt wrong with that sir, they always do that. If there was anything seriously wrong it wouldn't select gear" .....yeh right!!

2 days later he was right, when the cable snaps they stop and you end up with a floppy gear lever. When the AA towed me in I had great delight in telling him his prognosis was 100% WRONG

Anyway, the problem is after ringing them every day to get an update the answer was always... "we are still waiting for the parts to arrive sir" ...." excuse me, do you know why they are taking so long, it's only a couple of gear linkage cables"..... "I don't know sir, but I'll check" ... "you mean after 6 days you don't know why".. . "No sir" .... "thanks you've been a great help..would you ring me back and let me know" ... "of course sir"

Friday 27th August 9.15am phone rings... "good morning sir..your local friendly highly efficient Ford Dealer here" ...."who's that then"... "very funny sir,,droll droll, just to let you know that your gear linkage cables are on back order with Ford" .. "right what does that mean".., "well sir, they haven't got any, and they'll be making some especially for you. They don't do that for everybody sir. Unfortunately we haven't got a date yet when that will be, does that help" ..." oh yeh it does, thanks"

Right, what I want to know is, who's got all the gear linkage cables, I only need one but they come in pairs, so who out of you lot out there has been and bought up all the stock of cables and is replacing them at every service.

If you have any spare can you sell me a couple please as I'm missing my little car, and I'm having to drive round in a brand new Renault 1.2 Turbo Dynamique(yeh right)100 bhp shed.

Tone

Interesting..... I had a similar but nothing like as traumatic problem with my Mk 7 2009 1.6 TDCI. It must have been at about 4000 miles when I suddenly lost the gearchange in the middle of the road whilst waiting to turn right. I thought the clutch had gone at first when I couldn't get into gear. Anyway the AA came within 20 mins and said that a gear linkage joint had come apart. After a bit of a struggle the patrolman managed to get the joint together again (he had long arms !) and escorted me to the local Ford dealer where I booked it in for a check. They could find nothing wrong and said that it couldn't have been put together properly at the factory. NO problems after that of any sort. Ironically and purely coincidentaly, I have now swapped the car for a 1.4 petrol automatic. Simply because I have had so many automatics in the past and found 'pumping' the clutch a bit archaic these days (or you could call it laziness !). No problems with this Mk 7 so far other than 'creaking' brakes. I do miss the tremendous torgue of the 1.6 diesel but this petrol auto is very smooth and quiet.

[tone]

Just to let you know yesterday Friday 3rd Sept, it's ready for collection. On arriving at the dealers they appologised for the delay in the arrival of the parts. They informed me that they installed both linkages although only one had snapped. It's under warranty so no problem. I did find out that although it isn't a common fault they have replaced a few of these. Lets hope they don't have to replace them again. I average around 40-50k miles a year and although I've only had my little Fiesta since the begining of April it's already done 17500 miles without any issues.

It's good to have it back and after the Clio I appreciated the drive home.

I wonder whether this isa Peugeot problem (1.4Tdci Peugeot/Citroen Engine) or the linkages are unique to Ford.

[james_60]

Hi

Not 100% on topic but :-

When going from Third (3) to Fourth Gear (4) It crunches if i change slightly faster than normal ie when accelerating.

Jamie