Club 80-90 Forums

Engine CU
Gearbox DK

hello all,

This is my first post on here, but the wiki has been invaluable!

We bought a VW T25, A reg, 2lt, Aircooled van about 3 months ago and we've just started our long planned summer in France.
The idea was to slowly make our way down to Morzine and then do part time jobs to sustain us for the summer.

Before we left England the van had had some issues shifting gear and generally it was very sloppy finding gears so I and the local garage overhauled the linkage as best we could, and replaced the parts that were available and generally the gear shifting was a lot tighter and nicer.

On day 6 in France changing gears started to become a bit of an issue, it would get stuck in 1st and take a lot or persuasion to come out of gear, then next change it would be absolutely fine, this happened a couple of time most noticeably in 1st and once or twice in 3rd, until all of a sudden in busy Annecy traffic it went into 3rd gear and wouldn't come out at all. The stick moves around freely and you can hear and feel the linkage moving around, but the gear wont release.
after much wiggling we had to call breakdown assistance to take us to a garage.

We ended up at Bosch Service Technic Auto http://garages.boschcarservice.fr/22269 ... r-l-seynod" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; which initially we thought was perfect because they specialise in classic Porsche and VW's and they had 4 VW T25's there and several beetles a T2 and an old Aircooled Porsche.

The diagnosis at the road side and at the garage was that the problem wasn't the linkage but within the gearbox.

A major problem is that the garage is very busy, as are all the garages in Annecy at the moment according to the breakdown driver, and obviously the van was our accommodation so every night we have to stay in the local hostel costs us money.

The solutions offered to us from the garage are:
1. Wait until the end of July to have a specialist open up the gearbox and see about fixing our current gearbox. No specific timeframe or price to this, but probably the cheapest option, until you factor in us paying for accomm every night until July.
2. The garage owner has offered us a different gearbox from a friend of his that is 'shorter geared' but should work. He is waiting on a call back from his friend to see exactly what the gearbox is. He cannot tell us how much shorter it would be and how much of a difference it would make.
His original quote for this is 1100 Euros for the box, and 4 hours labour to remove and refit 265 Euros and oil 40 Euros. grand total 1405 Euros for a refurbed different gearbox and we can be on the road again by Friday next week.
HOWEVER he hasn't told us yet what the other gearbox is, and perhaps most importantly hasn't told us if his friend wants our gearbox in exchange for the one he is selling which seems to be the norm.

The other options we have are to get the vehicle repatriated to the UK through our breakdown cover and get the gear box removed and looked at by a pro back in England (like Aidan) but again thats going to be £260 ish for a garage removal and refitting and £750 for a refurbished box.
However this realistically means an end to our trip as we'll need to be back in the UK for 2 weeks minimum and we'll need a place to stay etc, and frankly the shame of returning home after 10 days into our epic adventure that we've told everyone about would be unbearable!

Apologies for the long story, and my questions for the forum are;
A. how much is our current DK gearbox worth, in not working order, with unknown problem?
B. does anyone have an educated guess what might cause our gearbox to stick in gears and how, and how much to get it fixed
C. does anyone have any experience with this garage
D. does anyone know where we might be able to source another DK gearbox in France with a week or so.

Thanks very much in advance.

Lastly should you so wish you can follow our slow progress on Instagram @yvette_culbert, it used to be @thechalkboardvan before we bought it.

Nick

The fact that it's sticking in first and third but not 2nd/4th suggests to me it could be that the plastic ball on the relay lever attached to the G.box is worn.
Mine used to get stuck in reverse and first (4 spd box) and this solved it. The ball was popping out of it's socket like a dislocated joint.
I'd replace and adjust that before you commit to replacing the box, unless you already have done of course.
Good luck and hope it's not the box.

Disconnect the linkage from the gearbox and try to get the gears 'by hand' (with the engine OFF of course) ... If you can then maybe it's the linkage, if you cannot it's the box OR maybe the clutch isn't disengaging correctly ?

(ours went near Brussels ... trust me it's a long old ride on the truck with the flashing lights )

Ian

If it is the gearbox thats at fault then I wouldnt accept the shorter geared box, its most likely a box from a 1600 ct engine and they are cheap as chips, so somebody would be making a lot of money ! Its also not the norm to take a box with a different spec in exchange. As said above can you check yourself if the gears select by moving the double ball lever on the side of the box by hand.

Definately check the relay lever. A cursory inspection might suggest the gear linkage from the front to rear is moving okay with the gear stick, but if either the connection between the linkage and the relay lever, or between the relay lever and the gear selection shaft, is bad then you won't be able to select any gears.

To engage / disengage a gear you need to actuate the end of the gear selection shaft which comes out of the side of the gearbox, and which is toothed on the end to rigidly connect to the relay lever, the ball-end of which is held in a cup on the end of the gear linkage. When you push the gear stick sideways the linkage and relay lever move the gear selection shaft into or out of the gearbox. Then moving the gear stick forwards or backwards causes the linkage to rotate the gear selection shaft clockwise or anticlockwise to engage the respective ratio in the gearbox. If you disconnect the linkage from relay lever you should be able to actuate the relay lever by hand as above.

We had our gear selection fail in Iceland last year - the toothed connection between the relay lever and the gear selection shaft failed as the teeth on the relay lever had worn away. Moving the gear lever side to side still moved the gear selection shaft into the geabox as normal, but the relay lever wasn't gripping the selection shaft and so we weren't able to turn the selection shaft to engage the gearbox. It may be that your gear linkage has failed in a similar way while you are in gear and you have been left unable to get 'out of gear'. Replacing the relay lever was all that was required to get our van back on the road.

Good luck.

Something tells me that you kind of know what you ought to do but pride is getting the better of you - come home. Or scout around on french forums, T3 facebook pages (in France) and see if you can get any help from friendly owners near to where you are, bit of a long shot but you never know.

Bonne chance.

nobody has mentioned the dreaded spigot bearing

This is what crippled my van,

The gear stick would move around freely, but the van is in gear.

A change of the spigot and everything was ok

Before the bearing went....gear changes became difficult

What confused me was changing into neutral at the stick then stalling at the lights.... Cos the bloody thing was still in gear. And yes, it was rush hour at a busy intersection so I was popular.

AA got it into gear and I ran it home on hazzards wiht the AA behind in first all the way.

Bearing puller and a part less than a tenner and we were away

Maybe your issue?

Em
xx

ermie571 wrote: nobody has mentioned the dreaded spigot bearing

Hiya Emm, that's what I was getting at with this ..

Ian Hulley wrote: OR maybe the clutch isn't disengaging correctly ?

With this being an aircold I'm not sure of their set-up. They don't seem too worried as they haven't even replied anyway

x

ahh - i thought you were talking about the clutch and release bearing...

Hello,

Are you still at Annecy then..

Cordialement,

I like the fact we're all coming up with suggestions to check before condeming the box.
Optimists the lot of us. only an optimist would drive a T25.
It could of course be a broken selector fork or one that's loose on it's shaft.
Hopefully the OP will come back with good news.

bigbadbob76 wrote:I like the fact we're all coming up with suggestions to check before condeming the box.
Optimists the lot of us. only an optimist would drive a T25.
It could of course be a broken selector fork or one that's loose on it's shaft.
Hopefully the OP will come back with good news.

It's not optimism but more prudence and the suggestion of additional things to check before shelling out £1K for a new gearbox.

Hi all, thanks very much for all the advice, it was really helpful.

In the end a 2nd hand DK gearbox for came up in England and we bought it over Facebook, and go tot shipped out here to France.
It was £140 to ship but we only paid £300 for he box, and we got to keep our old broken box so we paid another £140 to ship that back to the U.K. And we'll get that fix up when we're back home.

The garage charged us €260 to swap out the old gearbox for the new which is thought was pretty reasonable and we were back on the road and the gearbox has been perfect since.

There was only one bitter twist, which was the garage managed to pinch the wire from the ignition switch to the starter solenoid between the clutch and the engine when they reassembled it.
We made it 80 miles from Annecy before the van simply refused to start.
It took a fair amount of poking and prying around before I found the problem, but this too is now all fixed and we're rolling again.

Great that your trip can continue. Where are you heading for now?

I am amazed that you did all that, if that happened to me I would not have a clue on how to overcome all those obstacles - well impressed!