Hello

Does anyone know how easy it is to make the gear shift in my MK1 Octy VRS feel like a new car?

I was happy with it before, but i have had a brand new mondeo for the past 4 weeks while my car has been in the paint shop. I picked it up yesterday and all is simply awesome with the exception that my gear change now seems to be quite slack and not as precise as the Mondeo. Now i know its a 6 year old car now so expect it to wear and need new bits, but is it simply a case of fitting some new bushes or cables etc... or is it more in depth and involves the bowles of my gearbox.

Thank in advance for any answers or pointers.

Kind Regards

Garry

New cables and new rubber/plastic bits.

have you tried re-adjusting it?

its pretty easy. and the only tool you need is a drill bit.

No, not even looked at it to be honest. Just wondered how it was set up. It goes into all the gears okay but just does not feel nice and tight and direct. Will have a play with it and if i can get some ramp time this weekend.

Cheers for the advice and pointers.

Kind Regards

Garry

I've got the instructions on how to do it somewhere, I'll try and dig them out for you mate.

I think you push back the black thumbscrews on both cables, then lock the gearstick in it's pegged position. Then pop the cable adjusters back and it should be adjusted then.....

Awesome, thanks alot for that. Look forward to reading that

Kind Regards

Garry

there's two main sources of slack in the linkage -

The nylon sleeve that locates the "ball" at the base of the gearstick and the void rubber ends on the cables that operate the selectors at the gearbox end.

The balljoint sleeve is pence to replace and takes 5 minutes to do, not sure the price of the cable ends, but in time they get quite soft and don't make for a positive shift experience so would likely benefit from replacement.

We recently replaced the rubber cable ends on our race car with rose-joint spherical bearings, what an improvement! Probably a bit extreme for a road car, but it does demonstrate the improvement gain from reducing the amount of lost movement due to the soft rubber cable ends.

Awesome, thanks alot for that. Look forward to reading that

Kind Regards

Garry

Woops, I forgot about this! Sorry!

It does say how to adjust the cables in the Haynes manual if you have one.

If I find you some instructions, can I have a free exhaust please?! Sounds like a great deal to me!

Rich - Thanks for that. I got a load of rose joints here at work but as you say, may be a little extreme for the road Will change the bushes and see what difference that makes first.

Bodge - Give me a call, always happy to do a deal on an exhaust for a fellow Briskodian

Kind Regards

Garry

to fit the rosejoints we ran a M6 die down the end of the gear cables and made a couple of threaded adaptors to connect the cables to rosejoints.

The only downside I can imagine on a road car is vibration noise, which is obviously irrelevant on the race car

Our problem was being able to shift quick enough, the original rubber bushed cable ends had too much "give" which allowed the selector and gate controls to get out of sync during the shift so it baulked between 2nd/3rd and 4th/5th.

Anyone got any tips or instructions on how to do this? I've just tried on mine and now I can't get into reverse, and other gears don't feel very engaged.

The angle piece you're meant to use doesn't seem to do much. Which way should I turn it?

I have not got round to doing this yet so cant help im afraid :(