Gear Problems

Can anyone help with this bizarre problem.

Had a fault suddently develop with our X Reg 105 JTD Multi. It stopped wanting to go into 1st and reverse gear.

The car had a full clutch change less than 20k ago. Took it to a local garage that turned out to be a mistake as they wern't very good. They changed the master and slave cylinder on the clutch (it took them 5 days to do this).

The car drove home from the garage OK but the next morning it woudn't go into any gears at all! We had a breakdown service take it back to the garage and to our anoyance the gears were working fine again when it was taken off the truck. It went OK for the next few days but now this morning ot won't go into any gears again.

Anyone got any ideas?

I guess your problem is sorted by now, if not get the clutch master cylinder looked at, preferably not by a doughnut! it is very easy to strip from INSIDE the car, almost certainly they will find the piston return spring is broken, buy a new m/cyl. strip that, fit new spring and piston into old cylinder (make sure everything matches, i believe there was a modified m/cyl) bleed from the clutch slave by lifting the clip and withdrawing the pipe a little, and the jobs a good'un

Really, I need to get at ours, can you elaborate?

Cheers.

Failing that, another alternative - as a member of the independent multi owner's forum recently found out - is that the 2 gear selector cables are beyond adjustment and need replacing. DIY and about 100 quid for new cables.

cheers
mish

Right then - story in full.

Car gear change currently varies between OK, crunchy and unusable. It is usually at its best when the car is cold and in cold weather.
It gets worse as the car is used or on very warm days and doesn't improve on pumping the pedal.

Last summer gear change was a bit iffy so we had slave cyl changed, no improvement. The guy who changed it was a hapless knob so ruled him out for further work.

We had the clutch changed shortly after, the garage checked linkages first and said they were OK so did the clutch and said that the finger springs were goosed.

Car was a bit better but never brill, wondered if Fiat boxes were just crap (they all do that sir...) so didn't worry about it too much but it has got progressively worse and currently the car is often unusable.

We had the master cyl changed today, the whole thing not just a bodge of replacing the innards. The drive was OK initially but went back to crap, I guess the improvement was due to the bleeding.

So what now?

I am sure it is a hydraulic problem as if it was the clutch failing would it have episodes where it was OK?

Given the experience with the guy who changed the slave I am wondering if he did it at all or just bled it up and decided it was OK as it wasn't leaking (he is a real cock), is it worth doing this again? Would pumping the pedal improve matters if it was the slave?

I have spent nearly a grand now and am at a loss what to do next and want to go on holiday in it at the weekend.
I will speak to the mechanic tomorrow but in the meantime if anyone has any input I would be grateful.

Edit: We bled the clutch manually after he had changed the master cylinder, could this be the problem? Should I use a pressure bleeder or am I being optimistic?

It does sound like a hydraulic problem to me . What you could do is to depress the clutch and hold it to the floor with a stick or suchlike and note the position of the clutch fork ( release arm ) if over a period it creeps towards the gearbox , you can be pretty sure that there is a hydraulic fault . If both the cylinders are new ( who knows ? ) then check the pipe between for fractures or if it has been chaffed . Double check the unions into the cylinders .

Happy hols

This sounds rather like mine (although its no where near as severe).

Mine occasionally has the bite point close to the floor although the pedal height is ok. When the bite point is low, it is slightly more difficult to select gears (a little clunky) and on occasion reverse will grind.

Most of the time it is absolutely fine to drive which is why im starting to lean towards hydraulic problems rather than clutch or pressure plate problems.

Keep us updated, this could be very interesting.

At the risk of being repetitive.

Look from under the car at the top of the gearbox. You will see 2 selector levers each with the cable terminal on top. This is a swivel joint held on by a spring clip. Just check and see how loose/worn these are. If they are very floppy then be suspicious. This is just the case of a member on the multipla owners forum with identical problems.

Variations of performance according to temperature in any gearbox are caused by the oil being of varying viscosity according to heat in the oil. When it is cold the oil can be that much thicker that it drags on the shafts and prevents them 'freewheeling' when in neutral. Freewheeling equals selector hubs etc. subject to rotation when you don't want it. (Remember that the main shaft is always turning except when the clutch is depressed, and even then there can be a slight turning from clutch drag.) Therefore if the gear selection is not positive and has some slack in it, then other symptoms will be apparent.

Anyway, the cable problem was identified in one case, so its just another option. But worth checking, I am sure my 83,000 miler needs new cables from this diagnosis. I have the low bite point clutch despite new spring and piston etc. etc. HTH

cheers
mish

I will check the cables at the week end,but mine does not seem to be temperature related, sometimes it is apparent from a cold start up, other times it comes on during driving after having been fine from cold. It is infrequent, follows no apparent pattern and bloody annoying!

It has become apparent that since the master cylinder change a damn good pumping on the clutch pedal sorts it (about 50 pumps).

Once this pumping is done it is OK until left unused for a while.

I will bleed it tomorrow with a pressure bleeder.
Spoke to the mechanic though and he reckons it isn't air but a faulty slave (the slave was supposed to have been changed 12 months ago) but there were metal fragments visible when the master came off and we wonder if some crap has got into the slave and caused scoring.

Why did they ever do away with a clutch cable?

So you recommend giving the old girl a damn good pumping then.........

It's the only thing that works for this tired old Italian box!