Speaking to my garage about replacement clutch I mentioned that 1st gear is getting more and more notchy and often crunches when changing down fron 2nd. I asked if while the engine and gearbox was split whether they could investigate this. Their reply was that it was probably down to the worn clutch and not to bother with the extra work.

This sounded strange, since most garages would bite your arm off to do some more work and charge you for it. Is my garage speaking the truth? and why would a worn/badly adjusted clutch do this?

Any ideas?

Cheers,

Andy

Andy
Yes, it is possible as there is a chance that the worn clutch is dragging, i.e. not disengaging fully. However, if this is the case it is likely that you would experience a similar problem with the other gears. It could be that the synchromesh on 1st gear is weak, not really a major problem as you could double-declutch (not many people know how to do this these days!) or wait until you are almost stopped before engaging 1st.
Why not get the garage (or yourself - it's easy) to re-new the gearbox oil to Castrol Syntrax, it could help the syncro. performance.
JohnD

John,

I've tried syntrax and it seemed to help a little. However, the 1st gear engagement problem has got worse lately. It's sometimes difficult to engage 1st from neutral, i.e. clutch in, try to engage, doesn't, back to neutral, clutch out then in again and then it engages.

Is this a worn synchro and is it worth renewing?

Andy

Try the old trick of engaging 2nd at a standstill from neutral then pushing quickly through to 1st. By engaging 2nd you stop the layshaft from spinning and by moving quickly to 1st the shaft will not have time to start spinning again. If it goes into 1st ok it could mean that the clutch is in fact dragging. Try it again, this time hesitating in neutral (keep the clutch down of course!) if it baulks it could mean that the shaft has started to spin again, this should confirm it. With the "perfect" clutch engaging 1st at a standstill from neutral should not be a problem even if there was no synchromesh. Back in the "old days" 1st never had synchromesh anyway!
JohnD

[Edited by JohnD - 9/30/2002 7:15:41 PM]