1st 3rd and 5th selection problems

[Mike Y]

Hi Everyone

It has been a while since I posted on the forum.

I have a strange gear shift problem on my S2. The car has been unused on the road for some years however I pulled the car out of the garage today and the gear change seemed very sloppy and vague I put this down having not driven the car for a while and owning a Mazda 6 with a very tight clunky gear change. However when I went to engage 1st gear and any gear involving moving the gear lever forwards i.e 1, 3, 5 the gears would not select and the lever would spring back to the neutral position. First can sometimes be selected but selection is so so sloppy. Any ideas it is very strange for this to happen as the car has not moved except for in an out of my garage for a few years.

Cheers Mike

[wayne]

Hi Mike.

I saw your post earlier in the day but did not reply as I thought that one of our experts would have poped up with the solution....

Im my limited knowlage it sounds like a gear change cable has snapped (or is about to).

My answer may be totally wrong but it sounds similar to my experience many years ago...... May be just worth checking.

Hope that you get it sorted soon!!

[Andy_J]

Sounds like the fore/aft gearbox cable has come detached from the mounting plate on the gear box. If you are lucky then it is just the big e clip that holds the cable in place has failed. More often than not it is the plastic sleeve that fails and it is either a new cable or get a set of upgraded cables

[Rambo]

Maybe this topic will help you out short term Mike ?

viewtopic.php?f=48&t=18246

[Mike Y]

Hi
Thanks for the replies. My car is an S2 with original S2 gear cables so my understanding is that this removes the possibility of failure of the clips and plastic adjustment parts as the S2 cables fit the same as the AB Motorsport cables using good old fashioned threaded metal sleeve with nuts to secure. I have had gear cable failure on one of my previous Elans but it was an SE and it had the typical plastic adjuster sleeve failure resulting in no across gate movement at all. This current problem is different. Looking at the gearbox side of things all seems to move fine fore and aft and across gate however when going for the 1, 3, and 5 the gear change seems to not quite move the fore aft selector far enough to select the gear. I struggle to understand how this has happened, I was wondering if anyone has had a cable stretch causing these symptoms? I thought the S2 cables had solved all the issues with cable problems.

Any further info would be great before I start pulling the car apart.

Cheers Mike

[HJ2]

There is another possibility.
The crimp may have become loose. The cable then looks fine, but operates kinda shitty
There is a post with sums up al the possible problems with the cables , my pictures are there as well.

If it is the crimp, the fix is cheap and easy!

[DeeAitch]

Mike, have a look at the ball joint attaching the cable to the gear stick. Nut has been known to come loose which might cause this?