1998 Almera Si 1.4 gear selection.

tombre

1998 Almera Si 1.4 gear selection.
My son has this car. I test drove the car and found it's difficult to find gear from neutral, you need to be precise especially going into third and fourth. It's feels like the linkage to me, I'm no mechanic but he was informed his gearbox is on the way out. I'm not fully convinced and there's no crunching or noises from it. Only last night it got stuck in third and apparently he had a hell of a job to get it out. It's also hard to get reverse but once the gearstick is in the correct position it slides in perfectly.

Any thoughts on this please

Henry Ford III

You may be right. I'd advise to check the clutch for wear and the gearbox oil too.

tombre

I checked the clutch as you suggested. It seems plenty strong with no signs of slipping. I tested it by resting the 2 front wheels against a kerb, released the clutch slowly, it didn't take much to mount the kerb.
I'll wait until early next week when the factors are open, get the new linkage joints and see what happens. I'll post the result.
Thanks for your response.
Happy 2008

tombre

Almost a year later, sorry for delay.
It finally emerged that gearbox was the actual problem. Aparently it a well known problem with these Almera's, it seems to have been rectified in later models (00 and later).
We fitted another gearbox, now this one is starting to show it's wear, hopefully it'll last the life if the car.

Tom