A few days ago my Panda broke down and I was unable to change gear. The RAC man fixed the gears by pushing the selector cable back on to the gear box and securing it with a tie. I now have the problem of doing a permanent repair. The fault is a worn socket joint where the cable joins the gear box and it appears that that joint can be unscrewed from the cable. Surely I don't have to buy a complete new linkage to fix this!!! The linkage cost almost £200 and the bit I need probably only costs £10. Surely there must be a way to repair this without replacing the whole gear linkage!
Hope someone out there can help.

How about trying a scrapper.

John.

Nope you will need a new cable. Breakers is the way to go.


Simple job


There is a rubber grommet under the car that they will not pass through without cutting.

Easiest is to get two cables with the grommet and just change 1/2 job


You can put the cables from the later Panda but you will have to cut of the grommet and swap over along with the gear stick and plate on top of the gearbox then glue the grommet back together.

I got charged £20 for the cables, strut (for another car), gear stick and plate.

Thank you all for your suggestions. Does the "socket" at the end of the linkage where it connects to the gear box unscrew from the linkage?

There is a grey area here.

Mine 05 are different to the girl friends 06 cables.

Mind just pop off with a bit of force. Mine had bellows on the gearbox end

The G/F has clips and no bellows. Cant be 100% but seem to remember there was a button you pressed at the back.

HI, Managed to get a second hand cable but can't remove the ball joints. Both ball joint rims have come away from the inner rubber bits and I can't get these off the ball joints. I have tried levering them using a spanner but not joy. Any suggestions would be very welcome.

If you have replacements I wouldn't be to worried what condition the old ones came off.

Spanner and crowbar is the way I did mine

They are tight and room is limited. (the gearbox end)

Nibble them off with pliers if you have to.

Don't worry about remembering which way round they go the ball and sockets are different sizes and can only go on one way


The newer type are so much easier just push the button and pull off. No tools needed

On my Punta Mk2 (which presumably had the old type connectors), a small right angled crowbar was ideal to pop the cable socket end of it's respective gearbox ball end. IIRC, the ball joint ends were permanently crimped to the cables.

Like this