Can anyone help.
Arrived home from work to find the wife's Brava 1.4SX sitting on the drive with a pool of oil underneath. The oil is coming from the gearbox bell. She said the car was juddering a bit when braking/clutching.
I had this gearbox repaired about three years ago. The Mechanic then said Bravas suffered with oil leaking onto the clutch plate and this had caused the gearbox to fail. Could it be the same thing again?
Am just about to go out and start dropping the gearbox out, if anyone has any ideas or suggestions they would be welcome.
By the way it is definitely gear oil and not engine oil.

Bad News,
Somethings broken up inside the gear box and has burst the bell housing. Most of whatever it was seems to have been chewed up by the differential which is in a pretty bad state. One of the other gears has some nasty chips out of some of the teeth.
Hope I can find a new gearbox in the breakers, otherwise I sense an expensive repair coming on.

Yes I think that may have caused a slight judder.


Welcome to the forum. Hope you get sorted out without having to spend too much.

Let us know how you get on.

Do you know what went wrong? i.e. what caused the failure? You should try and find out just incase it happens again!

You see the big gear with the chipped tooth, well this funny shaped thing in the photo below lives at the end of that gear shaft. There was obviously something else there as well, possibly a seal or a bearing. Whatever it was was made of hard metal as all the fragments I have found are mostly hardened with some soft white metal as well.
Anyway whatever it was it broke up and was pushed by the big gear into the differential housing where it burst the clutch housing (hence the oil leak) before being chewed up by the diff.
Its a 96 1.4 Brava and I believe it wasn't uncommon with this gear box. Later versions have it sorted. Unfortunately this is a low mileage car so the fault has occurred quite late.

There seem to be a few 1.4 failures about at the moment so it MAY be a 1.4 fault. Let us know how you get on though and hope it gets sorted soon.

Back on the road.
Managed to find a gearbox in a breakers - €250. Its from a 98 Brava with 50K on the clock. Started refitting last evening and had it out on the road by four this afternoon. So far so good. Seems to be even better than the original (touch wood). Makes me wish I had a gearbox like that in my Veccie (moderators please dont censor me for using the V word).
Interesting point to note is that I had a real job finding this gearbox. There were four guys after this one, I managed to get to the breakers first. I really do believe this is a common 1.4 problem.


FaiJai