Club 80-90 Forums

I have a 1983 4 speed T3 which found all its gears up until this morning. It now fails to find reverse and instead goes into first in the reverse position. Having looked underneath, the rubber housing near the gearbox for the selection rod is corroded/past it's use and there is a lot of play in the rod together with lots of congealed grease. I've looked on both the wiki and other forum threads and am yet to identify a similar issue. What's the likely cost of getting this fixed and are there any diagrams to help with doing it at home? All help is appreciated, Tom.

T3Tom wrote:I've looked on both the wiki and other forum threads and am yet to identify a similar issue. What's the likely cost of getting this fixed and are there any diagrams to help with doing it at home?

Hi Tom,

Sounds familiar.

Have a look at this thread: Gear linkage forum thread

You'll find diagrams, photos and a fair bit of discussion about the early Aircooled gear linkage (which is very different to the later one, as shown in the Wiki). Your problem is most likely to be that the crinkly washer on the locating pin has disintegrated. This causes loads of play to be introduced into the mechanism at the gearbox end, and makes it difficult to select gears. If your gear linkage has never had any work done on it before, there WILL be wear in other places, which we talked about in that thread, but fixing this part will definitely help. I have completely rebuilt an early gear linkage recently, so I have a pretty good idea of how it works, what wears, and what parts are available. I took a fair few photos, so just ask if you need to see something that's not in the other thread.

To answer your specific question, the likely cost to fix it, if you do it yourself, should be under a tenner for parts. Its not very difficult, if you can use a spanner. This is the part that needs fixing:



To get it out, just undo the nut from the end, slide it into the end of the rear linkage rod, and pull away. Once it's on the bench, you'll have access to clean it up and get the remains of the bush off the end. All being well, the plastic moulding which locates the crinkly bush will not be too worn. You need to replace this bush:

Crinkly bush

and the rubber bellows:

Rubber bellows

Once it's all repaired, get it back together with plenty of moly grease in the end of the linkage.

Good luck,

James

Hi James,

Many thanks for your advice, very much appreciated Sorted that little problem out and now the rod is nice and solid. Still having fun with the gear linkage rear shaft and the UJ (hope this is the right term) above it. Looks like the plastic ball has worn down. Is there a quick fix or does the whole section need to be replaced?

T3Tom wrote:Still having fun with the gear linkage rear shaft and the UJ (hope this is the right term) above it. Looks like the plastic ball has worn down. Is there a quick fix or does the whole section need to be replaced?

Do you mean part no. 23 in this diagram? On my linkage, I found that only the top ball (the one that takes the side-to-side movement) was worn. It gets all the sliding abrasion from the top guides of the rear selector rod. You can buy a whole new part, but I found that all the other areas on mine were fine, so it seemed a bit silly to scrap a whole part for the sake of a bit of wear on one plastic ball. I'm working on some kind of solution. Here's the part, anyway:

Early gearbox relay lever

Out of interest, how did you manage to fix the selector pin wear between midday yesterday and this morning? Lightning quick parts delivery!

James

Hi James,

I got in touch with a local Aircooled specialist (Manchester Aircooled) and he suggested a cut piece of garden hose would be a good interim measure. Works an absolute treat With regard to the worn ball, wondering if a couple of pieces of cycling inner tube might do the trick...

Hi James,

Quick update: it's definitely the Early Gearbox relay lever and by the looks of things will need replacing with no quick fix in the meantime. Thankfully the T3 is a lend at the moment (supposed to be trying it out over the BH weekend) so I know one area (of many!) to look at with great interest when purchasing one. Your words of advice were spot on on and much appreciated. No doubt more questions will follow during the buying process.

Thank you once again,

Tom

Just wanted to say a thank you to all involved for help. It's my van Tom was borrowing. Thankfully it turned out to be an alignment issue with the gear selection, easily sorted by Stef at MAC VW this morning, and no parts needed. Happy days