Hello everyone! Following on from my jumping out of reverse thread I've now lost 1st,3rd&5th gear, they just feel really sloppy and won't engage at all, hoping this is an adjustment on a cable somewhere rather than a gearbox / box of matches. 

7 minutes ago, BP2411 said:

Hello everyone! Following on from my jumping out of reverse thread I've now lost 1st,3rd&5th gear, they just feel really sloppy and won't engage at all, hoping this is an adjustment on a cable somewhere rather than a gearbox / box of matches. 

Not familiar with the model , however a lot of gear selectors are operated externally with cable’s or some type of mechanism that are connected with rubber / nylon flexible type swivels that might have become detached 

Yeah I'm hoping cause it's the 3 gears at the top of the gear stick it's not moving a cable enough to engage. 

4 minutes ago, BP2411 said:

Yeah I'm hoping cause it's the 3 gears at the top of the gear stick it's not moving a cable enough to engage. 

It does work on a push pull sort of way its what makes me think thats what happened , because it’s like you say , it’s all in the same direction 

26 minutes ago, BP2411 said:

Yeah I'm hoping cause it's the 3 gears at the top of the gear stick it's not moving a cable enough to engage. 

The cable does have some adjustment in it.  There's like a black 'box' with a red push clip in it along the cable.  It makes more sense when you see it than I could ever write lol.

I'll have a look tomorrow, hopefully it just needs adjusting, it sounds hopeful that it's all on the the one side of the gear stick. 

Right... I had a little play around today, if someone could fill in the blanks it'd be a xmas miracle! 

 

Took all the surround off the handbrake & gearstick, 2 cables, one goes on the gearstick and the other goes on the side.... The side cable does what exactly? 

 

When I unclip the main one the gearstick is stiff, if I unclip the side one it's normal so I'm assuming the side cable (insert name here) is seized or jammed or has come loose? 

 

Took the gearstick out of the car totally cause it was only 4 nuts to do so and I thought I may find treasure underneath, no treasure but unfortunately the gearstick is easy to move whilst out of the car (imagine how easy it would've been if I just had to clean the gearstick mechanism or put one in from a scrap yard) 

Looked in the (how long have these been this bad?) Haynes manual 

It says, do what I've done so far, take battery and tray out (the box attached to the side of the battery tray, what the hell is it? I assume you're supposed to take it out with the tray but I always end up seperating the two cause the wiring loom never comes out) 

Now it says jack the car up and work underneath... Why did I take the battery & tray out? 

 

Come on people Xmas eve pep talk what we got 😂

I think we have a winner... Now does that go in with brute force? 

Fixed 🤞 popped that cable back in, sorted, reverse is still f****d but I didn't want to mess with adjusting the cable for now at least. 

a bit of lube on the cables and any pivots will make the change so much better and might stop the issue where something jumped out of place... (wd40 is quite good at this), spray about and wiggle the gear lever round each gear including reverse and then do it again maybe when its in a different gear (both inside the car and under the bonnet).  FYI often the odd other bit on any gear linkage comes in to play when you go to select reverse... Note: if any retaining clip has gone walkabout, it needs a decent fix you don't want the issue happening again, note a replacement gearbox will be >£1500 and up to £6000 on some DSG ones

can I offer a word of warning.....    driving whilst the gearbox is being odd is very stupid.  Death and or a destroyed car could be a split second away at any point.  If two gears manage to engage together, if the box doesn't destroy itself fast enough it will lock both front wheels solid immediately.   you will have no control over the car at all.  you can't dip the clutch the issue is after this, so it will exceptionally dangerous and at best hideously costly and very scary.

 

All is working fine now (bar reverse but it's been like it since I bought the car 5 years ago), luckily the linkage is in a surprisingly easy to access spot, I won't be using it now til probably new years eve (work not drink driving) so sometime between now and then I'll pop the cover off and give it some preventive maintenance. 

if you have no reverse and the change is weird, maybe one cable is not doing its bit.... in your pictures I didn't get what you were suggesting could be wrong.  Look under the bonnet of another to see if something wrong?

The sooner you get the gear linkage and all gears working the less likely you are to have a crash or destroy the box for good

 

The top cable isn't sat in the retaining clip, I put it back in and 1-5 work fine now. 

could it be routed badly,

either way maybe a cable tie will lock it in so it can't come out... get some lube and a cable tie it will be much nicer to drive

I've cabled tied it but will definitely spray it with wd40 or maybe cover it in copper grease or something. 

4 minutes ago, BP2411 said:

I've cabled tied it but will definitely spray it with wd40 or maybe cover it in copper grease or something. 

a PTFE spray like GT85 is much better than wd40 due to the fact that the ptfe stays on there and is better at lubricating also WD40 i found acts more like a degreaser than a lube if used for more than just un-seizing a bolt.

Unless your greaseing the part of the cable under the rubber bellows, i wouldn't recommend grease as it will just atract dirt and debrie causing wear and potentially a stuck cable down the line.