evildanger
New member
- Joined
- May 19, 2007
- Messages
- 26
- Points
- 4
I recently bought a R reg (1997) fiat punto 75SX 1.2 as my first car, and it has been great. Until today I was pulling away in first gear and found I couldn’t find second gear. The gear stick was floppy and the car was stuck in 1st gear, after trying several times I could move the gear stick up and down between first and second gear, but the punto was stuck in first gear. After a few miles trying to get home slowly in first (my mum going just as slow in front of me in case there was a problem) I pulled into a petrol station. I had to call out for the car to be picked up as the engine was starting to get hot. And it was too far to get home.
When the guy came to pick it up he said that it is quite a common problem in older punto’s for the gear selector to be “pushed to far” and he showed me how to manually put the car into neutral. This was done by opening up the bonnet and physically moving the gear selector to basically as he put it “reset the selector”.
It worked fine for a bit, although I noticed the gear stick wasn’t as firm as it was before and made a almost grinding sensation (not really much of a noise more a feeling through the gear stick) as the gears were locked into place. Now I can’t get into reverse gear and it looses 4th gear when it upshifts from 3rd (although if I wiggle it about a bit in neutral then I can get it into 4th gear, but it gets locked it 5th if I attempt to get it into 5th gear).
Is this just the gear selector, I doubt it’s the clutch as this feels just as it did before, I’m not mechanically minded but should this be easy and cheep to fix. Could it be the gearbox? Could it be both? Sorry if I’m not very good at explaining the problem, I literally passed my test 2 weeks ago and to have this happen on my 1st car is such a kick in the head for me.
Thanks for any help
PS could I have damaged the gear stick in anyway as I did kinda get a lil bit violent with it
When the guy came to pick it up he said that it is quite a common problem in older punto’s for the gear selector to be “pushed to far” and he showed me how to manually put the car into neutral. This was done by opening up the bonnet and physically moving the gear selector to basically as he put it “reset the selector”.
It worked fine for a bit, although I noticed the gear stick wasn’t as firm as it was before and made a almost grinding sensation (not really much of a noise more a feeling through the gear stick) as the gears were locked into place. Now I can’t get into reverse gear and it looses 4th gear when it upshifts from 3rd (although if I wiggle it about a bit in neutral then I can get it into 4th gear, but it gets locked it 5th if I attempt to get it into 5th gear).
Is this just the gear selector, I doubt it’s the clutch as this feels just as it did before, I’m not mechanically minded but should this be easy and cheep to fix. Could it be the gearbox? Could it be both? Sorry if I’m not very good at explaining the problem, I literally passed my test 2 weeks ago and to have this happen on my 1st car is such a kick in the head for me.
Thanks for any help
PS could I have damaged the gear stick in anyway as I did kinda get a lil bit violent with it
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