Mantasport

Well i was down at Rallyday at castle combe on saturday and on the way home i developed a little problem.</p>
I hadn't got that far from the circuit (about 5 miles) and in the middle of the worst downpour we'd seen so farthat day (typical of my luck).

I was just changing up from 2nd to 3rd and it felt a little notchy coming out of 2nd.
Then going into 3rd it was very nothcy. But with the amount of water on the road (lakes and rivers across the road) i thought this might be spraying into the clutch area and feeling a little odd.

But when i went for 4th it wouldn't come out of 3rd
I tried the clutch a couple of times and managed to pull it out of 3rd but then couldn't get it into any other gears
I coasted to a stop at the side of the road and tried the clutch up and down a few times and each of the gears. Eventually it went into 5th with a little notch, after that it would go into any of the gears.

So i popped it in 1st and pulled gently along, everything seemed fine, so i slowly accellerated along and changed to 2nd. But when i let the clutch up i had no drive and a load of rattles from the box

I slowed to a stop and checked but i could still get any gear. However trying to let the clutch up in second produced no drive and a load of rattles
I even tried to pull away in 3rd and it would have (i didn't actually pull away just checked if it would)

So as the weather looked better in the distance i decided to try to drive along and find some shelter (garage forecourt etc) and have a good look.
Set off in 1st then up to 3rd and 4th, 5th were all ok.

Passed the rain and pulled in at a garage, checked underneath but all looked fine. Still plenty of oil in the box aswell. I had someone to drop off in bristol before heading home so i decided to limp them home, drop them off and probally call the breakdown service.

The drive into bristol was ok but it would have been easier loosing 3rd than 2nd when in traffic around the city. But dropped them off, had a cuppa tea and checked the car over.

I rang the breakdown people and as i wasn't stranded at the road side and i obviously couldn't be fixed at the road side they reckoned it would be around 3hours before they could get a truck to me that could take me home to yorkshire. The rain and hot weather had meant they were very very busy. Plus with bristol being so close to the M4 and M5 all the recovery wagons were out on long jobs.

I really couldn't be arsed to sit around that long and not get home till after midnight, so i decided i would drive home a bit and if it got worse i'd call from the side of the motorway (where the pickup would be quicker ) hopefully that would be in a quieter area for breakdowns.

So i trundled onto the M4 and then M5, the rattle had completely stopped by this point. I stopped at the first 2 motorway service stations to check everything, still no noise and no problems (just no second gear)

So in the end i drove all the way home


Now this may not have been the best idea but at that point i really didn't care. It was far too hot and i'd had enough with the car as i'd just had my engine re-built after it holed a piston. I had bought a second hand engine but that died on me aswell after a month (and no i haven't been thrashing them at all, if i had i could understand it)

So looks like i need to take the gearbox out and get that rebuilt now
Obviously it was jealous that the engine had been done and felt left out.

To be honest its probally not a bad thing as a couple of gears had been a bit notchy if going up the box quickly and reverse allways graunches when its selected. So i presume the syncro's are worn.

So anyone had a box rebuilt? and if so where and how much?
Will driving it have killed/hurt anything else in the box?
There was no noise and even after 200miles it was as smooth as ever changing gear.

Scoobies really are money pits aren't they, but i still love it

Jay m A

iTrader: (2)

That sounds very similar to my experience.

I had broken a woodruff key and the nut on 5th gear was loose, this in turn had damaged some selector rings (or something!!) and also chipped 1-2 gearset.

basically 1 and 2 were very notchy, if i used any boost I'd loose gear selection, but once cooled down it would be Ok again.

In the end I limped it to API