Hiya all,

Got a few issues with my car at the minute and it's really getting me down. Last week, my washers gave up but that was due to the washer bottle being clogged with cack. This was sorted on saturday. I checked my oil at the same time and saw it was a little low. The car was fine. A few hours later, I parked it in a car park and went shopping. Two hours later I came back to the car and checked the oil again and put some oil into the car. It's the same bottle of oil I'd used recently. As I left the car park, I noticed that the gears seemed a bit stiff and weren't easy at all to get into. On sunday I had the same problem. My boyfriend drove to Chester as I'd said the gears were stiff. He too noticed that they were a lot stiffer than normal. Yet the car drove well and had no other issues. Once we got to Chester, my boyfriend put the car into reverse gear so that he could turn the car around. The car made grinding/crunching noises - almost as if the gear wasn't in properly. This happened everytime he tried to put the car in reverse. I tried and had no luck.

A day later, he took the car to work and a colleague checked it over. The car typically was 'well behaved' on the way to work and was fine for my bf's friend! He even changed gears with one finger! My bf has brought the car back to me tonight and it seemed fine. 5 minutes down the road and I noticed the gears stiffen momenterily. Then they were fine again. A few minutes after that, I pulled up to the traffic lights and the car was juddering whilst stationary. Once I got to the train station, it was still juddering whilst stationary. When I put the car into reverse, it again made the grinding noise yet 15 or so minutes before it was fine!

Please, does anybody have any ideas as to what this could be? I wondered spark plugs for the juddering but that doesn't explain the reverse/gears problem. I've just spent a fortune on car insurance and I feel like everything's all going wrong at once. I love my car too! Hope somebody can advise me please?

God i sympathise with you lol, maybe the gear box has moved slightly and with driving it occaisionally moves back into place, i'm just guessing, when my fiesta started juddering it was due to a lack of oxygen getting to the engine so it was choking, it turned out to be that expensive to fix i just lived with it. doubt its that though. Hope you get it sorted :)

Sorted the car. It was the clutch plate. It had come apart and was only held on by one joint! No wonder it was juddering like mad. Cost me a fair bit to replace the whole clutch. Most of that was just labour. Sorted now though thankfully :)

the clutch pedal is linked to the clutch by a little plastic hook, its ridiculous, mines kept coming off because whatever useless glue held it on wore away n then one day i put the clutch down n it snapped, so watch that for happening, i hate that car lol