Hi, I had an interesting problem with my gearbox today. It’s an 1108cc FIRE with a 5-speed box which Alex and I had rebuilt about 50km ago. What happened is I tried to back out of my driveway, I moved the gear stick to the reverse position and when I went to move off I went FORWARDS!!! 
At this point I found I couldn’t move the gear stick into any other position except neutral (which also went forwards). It appears that the selector fork (inside the box) had engaged first gear and then somehow fallen off it? If that makes any sense? The really bizarre bit is that the car had been sitting idling in neutral for awhile before hand and I hadn’t, at any stage, put it into 1st gear!
I solved the problem by removing the plate on the top of the gearbox and then removing and replacing the sliding selector bit with the two springs (back in the correct position) and now it works.
My main issue is that I don’t want this happening again and was wondering if anyone knows what might have caused this fault and how to rectify it.
At this point I found I couldn’t move the gear stick into any other position except neutral (which also went forwards). It appears that the selector fork (inside the box) had engaged first gear and then somehow fallen off it? If that makes any sense? The really bizarre bit is that the car had been sitting idling in neutral for awhile before hand and I hadn’t, at any stage, put it into 1st gear!
I solved the problem by removing the plate on the top of the gearbox and then removing and replacing the sliding selector bit with the two springs (back in the correct position) and now it works.
My main issue is that I don’t want this happening again and was wondering if anyone knows what might have caused this fault and how to rectify it.
