Gears 'sticky' and difficult to move, for 5 minutes.

Howdy do folks,


Friend has a 2011 Astra. Car is great, they've owned it for a good few years now (5ish) and it's not really given much/any bother in that time.


However, an issue has appeared over the last year or so, intermittent, but annoying.


When you hop into the car for a cold start, the gearstick won't go into gear. It's as though you haven't depressed the clutch fully, and have to 'wrestle' it in. Most notably seems to be an issue on reverse and 1st gear. The astra has one of those 'pull up' buttons on the gear stick, to get the car into reverse (so reverse and 1st are in the same general area).


Car was brought to a mechanic about 6 months ago who had a look at it. Said he couldn't really see anything wrong with it, but lubricated the mechanism (both in the engine bay, and under the gearstick in the car itself).


Issue went away for a while, but has returned. Car is 99% of the time parked in gear (I never do this, personally, so not sure if that's a bad decision in and of itself, or if it causes any wear or tear.. though i doubt it?).


Issue reared it's head again about a fortnight ago, and by going to town with some WD-40 on the mechanism under the gearstick itself, it eased up. However, it's still returning intermittently and is, as you can imagine, very frustrating.


Was wondering if anyone has encountered this with their own car before, or can suggest an approach to dealing with it that may help. An actual mechanic giving the shoulder-shrug was annoying as it'd be much better to be told X is broken and at least you'd know where you stand. So it doesnt appear to be anything obvious that's wrong with it.




Cheers for any insight or advice at all. Wouldn't be my area of expertise




Thank you.

wandererz

Generally due to the viscosity of the transmission oil at low temperatures.

Speak to a gearbox specialist about doing an oil change with a suitable synthetic oil.

Here's more info, albeit on a different car

https://talkford.com/community/topic/326881-very-stiff-gear-shift-when-cold/

Dirty Nails

KKV wrote: »

Howdy do folks,


Friend has a 2011 Astra. Car is great, they've owned it for a good few years now (5ish) and it's not really given much/any bother in that time.


However, an issue has appeared over the last year or so, intermittent, but annoying.


When you hop into the car for a cold start, the gearstick won't go into gear. It's as though you haven't depressed the clutch fully, and have to 'wrestle' it in. Most notably seems to be an issue on reverse and 1st gear. The astra has one of those 'pull up' buttons on the gear stick, to get the car into reverse (so reverse and 1st are in the same general area).


Car was brought to a mechanic about 6 months ago who had a look at it. Said he couldn't really see anything wrong with it, but lubricated the mechanism (both in the engine bay, and under the gearstick in the car itself).


Issue went away for a while, but has returned. Car is 99% of the time parked in gear (I never do this, personally, so not sure if that's a bad decision in and of itself, or if it causes any wear or tear.. though i doubt it?).


Issue reared it's head again about a fortnight ago, and by going to town with some WD-40 on the mechanism under the gearstick itself, it eased up. However, it's still returning intermittently and is, as you can imagine, very frustrating.


Was wondering if anyone has encountered this with their own car before, or can suggest an approach to dealing with it that may help. An actual mechanic giving the shoulder-shrug was annoying as it'd be much better to be told X is broken and at least you'd know where you stand. So it doesnt appear to be anything obvious that's wrong with it.




Cheers for any insight or advice at all. Wouldn't be my area of expertise




Thank you.

When it does that again,switch off the car & see if it selects gears ok. If it does you can mostly rule out gear oil & sticking linkages. Likely a clutch problem at that stage.If it doesn't more it's more likely a selector cable than gear oil.
Their mechanic needs to see it when it's actually doing it being the best diagnosis.

jasor3787

I have a 2011 Astra and this has just started happening also! I went to my mechanic yesterday and he didn’t know so told me to keep driving until it gets worse! It seems to only happen in the morning when the car has Ben sat idle all night, but I’m nervous driving in case the gears seize or something! Can you give me any insight to how you dealt with this? Did you manage to get it fixed?