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Can't select gear

6K views 15 replies 7 participants last post by  gnu 
#1 ·
Gears have been more and more difficult to select on my Rover 200 recently, until on Thursday, it became undriveable. I had a look and figured it was either an internal fault in the clutch bell-housing or the cable. I fiddled around with the auto-tensioner on the cable (at the bulkhead) and the crank arm (on the bell-housing) but could not make any lasting improvement. I could get it to work for a while but soon it would revert to clutch pedal to the floor and unable to engage gears. I figured it was probably the cable so ordered one up. Fitted it this morning, but again struggled to get the auto adjuster to make the cable tight enough to engage gears cleanly (indeed the new cable was looser than the old).

Btw I fitted a new clutch kit 25k ago, so hoping the bell housing internals are still ok as that's a big job!

After a bit of head scratching I established how far the crank arm had to go to disengage the clutch and effectively locked the outer sleeve on the auto adjuster on the old cable from retracting further than required using a small jubilee clip. This seems to have worked for now, essentially getting the car back on the road. The clutch feels a bit different, but disengages well. Long may it last!

Photo of my locked auto-tensioner below (the pink is a paint mark I put on the sleeve to monitor whether it moves in use):




Comments welcome on the above, and experiences with auto-tensioners and their adjustment/ reliability? And has anyone found an effective manual-tensioner at a good price?
 
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#4 ·
I had problems with mine and changed it, was never right after. The replacement wasnt very good, neither was a 2nd replacement to fix the first. I found that a little spring in the adjuster was weaker than needed, it goes around a plastic clip holding teeth into the adjuster. With it being weak it had a tendency to either unadjust itself or not to adjust correctly in the first place.
 
#5 ·
Where did you get the parts from? I have had problems with eBay parts in the past. Even ones labelled as genuine have turned up to be moody Chinese rip offs of very poor quality.
I had a 'genuine' focus heater resistor which wasn't and various bushes and ball joints on other customers cars that fail quickly because they bought them off eBay.
I buy parts from a local motor factors as they are better quality and if they do fail you can take it back. A little more expensive but worth it for piece of mind.
 
#7 ·
Thanks for the reponses. The repair hasn't lasted. Getting harder to engage gear today. As the mark on the clutch cable hasn't moved and the brackets look ok, so I assume the problem is related to the thrust bearing/ fork in the bell housing. :irked: Big job then if I do it; the MOT coming up so I'll have to decide whether it's worth it.
 
#9 ·
On my Rover 200 clutch cable snapped 4 years ago, but it was quickly fixed in my trusty garage with second hand cable from another Rover 200. No problems since. Little more adjusting in order to have same pedal height and feeling when releasing the clutch at the time of repair but that was it. Some year later I needed to change clutch, which is regular change after good 10 years of ownership.
 
#11 · (Edited)
Took a look at the gear selection problem on Sunday. This involved removing the [R65] gearbox, so was not trivial! I found two obvious issues:

1) thrust bearing loose, rough and damaged;
2) release fork prongs broken.

The clutch plates were only about 25% worn, so fine. The thrust bearing is easily sourced and replaced, so I'm not concerned about that. The problem is getting the release fork out of the bell housing. Its held by an interference fit hardened-steel pin, to the lever arm. The pin doesn't seem to move if drifted. A bit of research shows that others have come across this as well and replaced the gearbox instead! Bearing in mind the limited access to it, I haven't got hydraulic presses or an OA torch, has anyone removed one of these pins with normal tools?

I'm also looking into sourcing a replacement fork, which I'll assess whether fitting using a roll-pin will be sufficiently strong.



I've an image, but as you probably know photobucket's being silly atm so you can't link photos hosted there.
 
#14 ·
Time to report back on progress on this issue, with some pics as I opened an account with Imgur.

I took the g/b off the car; I won't go into detail as it was the same process as this which I posted 3 years ago:
Rover 214 Gearbox & Clutch Replacement - Picture Diary - MG-Rover.org Forums

The problem was immediately obvious: broken clutch fork and destroyed release bearing:




The clutch plates were only about 25% worn, so I decided to reuse them. The thrust bearing was easily sourced and I went for a LUK one this time. As I said above, the problem was getting the release fork out of the bell housing. It was held by an interference fit hardened-steel pin, to the lever arm. The pin didn't move at all if drifted, pressed in a clamp, vice, whatever.

I had given an old u/s R65 to a mate a few years ago who had wanted some parts from it. As luck would have it, he still had it and it had a good fork fitted. This I removed by cutting it out with a hacksaw.




From the serviceable box I simply cut the broken fork's shaft and removed it.




I then drilled it out the pin on the good fork, in a vice, to 8mm. This cost 3 damaged/ worn-out drill bits. I replaced to pin with a cap head M8 12.9 grade bolt and lock nut and refitted the gearbox.




However, I found the new clutch cable (the old one was damaged) exhibited a similar problem to what the chauffeur described in his post above. The cable would not go tight enough and automatically loosen when the pedal was in rest position. In retrospect, I wished I had renewed the clutch whilst it was apart, as a new clutch basket mechanism may have been looser (so much for being in a hurry and saving money - I'll not know now, it may have made no difference at all!). However, I found that fitting a grommet as a spacer against the bulkhead (the one below the shiney washer) stops the auto-adjuster over loosening the cable's tension each time the pedal's in the rest position.




Clutch's adjusted and works fine now - back on the road. :grin:
 
#16 ·
Second I've seen. Funnily enough the the first g/b I got in my linked blog above had a cracked clutch fork, so I took the box back and exchanged it. I didn't fancy getting the fork off then; and now I know I was right! :surprise:
 
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