S2 1, 2, 5th gear 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.
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

[muley]

IIRC the S2 cables still have a plastic end at the gearstick end - maybe this is where the problem lies.

Jim

[JossElan]

I had this problem.

The gear selector cables have plastic ends that split alowing a push action but not allowing a pull action - therefore you can get 2, 4 and R but not 1, 3 and 5.

To repair:

- Remove centre consol and gear lever assembly.
- Remove gear selector cables from gearbox.
(- Tie strong string to the ends so you can pull them back through the car and keep tabs on which washer goes where - there are loads.)
- Pull the cables through the centre consol.
- You will see damage to the plastic ends.
- The time consuming part - you need to fabricate 2 metal plates out of 2mm aluminium, or similar, with two notches cut out to hold the two cables behind the end fastening on one, and the other to sandwich the joint. These can then be bolted together using spacers to clamp the selector cable joints.
(- Or buy new cables)
- Reassemble

Hope this helps

[JossElan]

...There are also a few threads on this problem under 'Transmission, and Clutch' section - which may show so photos.