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Technical Sticky Gear stick

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Technical Sticky Gear stick

Tony123

Tony123

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My bravo has been struggling to spring the gear back to the middle position and putting into reverse and 1st seem like theres resistence.

Any ideas what is causing this? Ive looked at the gearknob at the joint level and it doesnt look too greasey. Ive sprayed duck oil on it to see if this improved but no difference.

Its a 59 plate dont think the oil or clutch has ever been changed.
 
It's worth trying lubricating the ends of the cables, then waggling your gearstick side to side a lot, repeat, repeat...........

The movement will wear away corrosion, and the lubricant will stop it getting worse..........in theory. If it doesn't work, all you've lost is a bit of time.
 
neilshep said:
It's worth trying lubricating the ends of the cables, then waggling your gearstick side to side a lot, repeat, repeat...........

The movement will wear away corrosion, and the lubricant will stop it getting worse..........in theory. If it doesn't work, all you've lost is a bit of time.
Click to expand...

Sadly if the cables are corroded your method won't touch it...
 
Tony123 said:
My bravo has been struggling to spring the gear back to the middle position and putting into reverse and 1st seem like theres resistence.

Any ideas what is causing this? Ive looked at the gearknob at the joint level and it doesnt look too greasey. Ive sprayed duck oil on it to see if this improved but no difference.

Its a 59 plate dont think the oil or clutch has ever been changed.
Click to expand...
I had exactly the same thing on my Bravo 1.6 multijet 120.

The solution on my car was to remove the cable from the gearbox end (just down next to the battery) this is attached to a lever and a pin which rotates when you move the gearstick side to side. I undid the bolt holding the pin in place and removed the washer and the spring and pulled the lever / pin out (I needed a hammer as the pin was very tight and was the cause of the stiff gears). I then sanded the pin with a fine grit paper until it fit through the hole and moved freely, added some copper grease, reassembled and job done, gearstick now springs nicely back to 3rd 4th.

Lots of people in forums talk about linkage cables being replaced I checked the cable by popping off the gearbox end and wiggled the gearstick to check for resistance and there was none. This suggested to me the issue was with the mechanism bolted on to the top of the gearbox. To access this I removed the battery, battery tray and fuse box. I hope this helps you and others that might have the same issue.
 
Last edited:
D4ZZ4 said:
I had exactly the same thing on my Bravo 1.6 multijet 120.

The solution on my car was to remove the cable from the gearbox end (just down next to the battery) this is attached to a lever and a pin which rotates when you move the gearstick side to side. I undid the bolt holding the pin in place and removed the washer and the spring and pulled the lever / pin out (I needed a hammer as the pin was very tight and was the cause of the stiff gears). I then sanded the pin with a fine grit paper until it fit through the hole and moved freely, added some copper grease, reassembled and job done, gearstick now springs nicely back to 3rd 4th.

Lots of people in forums talk about linkage cables being replaced I checked the cable by popping off the gearbox end and wiggled the gearstick to check for resistance and there was none. This suggested to me the issue was with the mechanism bolted on to the top of the gearbox. To access this I removed the battery, battery tray and fuse box. I hope this helps you and others that might have the same issue.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this.

My tools where robbed out my car last month and only have a select few remaining. If i have the tools to do this ill have a look at the weekend.

Would love this to be a simple fix. In the 5 years ive had the car, Ive had no issues apart from this one.

Goes to show what happens when you look after your car :)
 
I'm pretty sure a 13mm and a 15mm socket and a 10mm spanner is all you need. Mine has 3 13mm bolts and 1 15mm bolt holding the bracket covering the battery, a 13mm nut for the battery strap, 10mm spanner for the live terminal on the battery, 3 13mm bolts for the battery tray (2 under the battery and 1 under the fuse box) and the pin that caused the problem I think is secured with a 17mm nut.

See https://www.fiatforum.com/marea/128875-stiff-gear-stick.html

The nut you need is the one at the bottom of the 3rd picture down. It appears the Marea has the same linkage problem.
 
Last edited:
Ive just had a look at the car and think ive found the issue.

Ive uploaded a pic of the cable which moves when moving the gear stick left to right.
If you look at the top left cable you my be able to see that it has slight rust on it.

For about 10 minutes i was moving this in and out and spraying WD40 over it to loosen it up.

5th and 6th gear was the worst for springing back to the middle but now its loosened up enough to come back to the middle.

At some point ill get this cable replaced. I think this has happened because of the rubber seal at the back of the bonnet keeps coming off which is allowing water to fall over the engine.

Thank you all for your help.
 

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This looks a lot different to mine. Is yours a 1.9 Bravo? My 1.6 Multijet is exactly the same as the one in the Marea link I posted earier.
 
D4ZZ4 said:
This looks a lot different to mine. Is yours a 1.9 Bravo? My 1.6 Multijet is exactly the same as the one in the Marea link I posted earier.
Click to expand...

Yeah mines the 1.9 bravo. Seems to be OK now. Glad i had a look cause it was starting to bug me haha. Will send to garage when service is due or when it happens again. Just moved area so hard to find a garage to trust.
 
Thread resurrection:

Does anyone know what causes the gearstick to self-centre?

Mine doesn't.

I've cleaned up the gearbox-end components and everything moves very easily, right back to the stick, but the stick has no inclination to self-centre at all. It happily sits, limply, wherever it is left.

There must be springs somewhere, but where are they? Inside the gearbox? Under the gearlever gaiter? WHERE?!

:bang:

(1.9 Bravo)
 
Last edited:
biguglycar said:
Thread resurrection:

Does anyone know what causes the gearstick to self-centre?

Mine doesn't.

I've cleaned up the gearbox-end components and everything moves very easily, right back to the stick, but the stick has no inclination to self-centre at all. It happily sits, limply, wherever it is left.

There must be springs somewhere, but where are they? Inside the gearbox? Under the gearlever gaiter? WHERE?!

:bang:

(1.9 Bravo)
Click to expand...
Mine 1.9 gear stick didn't self center. Turned out it was something I don't no what it's called but it looks like a small plastic busch. This had somehow shrunk and don't now how it looked okey. Used a round file and made it bigger, after that easy quick fix it was back to normal. This "busch" sits on top of the gear box.

Unscrew the gear selector thing on top of gear box and see if it moves free there.
 
biguglycar said:
Thread resurrection:

Does anyone know what causes the gearstick to self-centre?

Mine doesn't.

I've cleaned up the gearbox-end components and everything moves very easily, right back to the stick, but the stick has no inclination to self-centre at all. It happily sits, limply, wherever it is left.

There must be springs somewhere, but where are they? Inside the gearbox? Under the gearlever gaiter? WHERE?!

:bang:

(1.9 Bravo)
Click to expand...


Hi there!

I had a very similar problem with my 2.0 Mjet 6 speed. The gear stick was stiff in 5th and 6th, didn't self centre and I found it increasingly difficult to get reverse. Got to a point where I couldn't get it at all.

Having a ramp, I decided to take the gear stick assembly out. It comes out from under the car. Exhaust has to be removed to get it. Took it off the gearbox too and found one cable was very stuck, almost seized. I put the ball end from the gearbox side into a drill chuck and spun it at a low speed while squirting oil down into it for about 10 mins. Freed it up nicely! It's self centering again now and the first time I drove after doing this I accidentally selected 5th instead of 3rd ? it was that free!

Alternatively, you can buy the cables online spurious. Can't remember the website, but it was about £100 for the cable I needed. I just googled the part number

Hope this helps!

Aido1196
 
biguglycar said:
Thread resurrection:

Does anyone know what causes the gearstick to self-centre?

There must be springs somewhere, but where are they? Inside the gearbox? Under the gearlever gaiter? WHERE?!

I had to change my cables about 6 months ago because they snapped.Mine is quite stiff as well.Even after replacing the cables.The actual "box" with the gear stick and cables is quite hard to access.You can only open it from underneath the car.You have to take down the exhaust and the heat shield in order to get to the box itself.i don't remember to see any springs around there though.
Click to expand...
 
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