General need new gearbox

[rusty123]

The wife's brava 1.2 needs a new gearbox. Fiat have quoted me just over £500 . I can get it elsewhere for £380. I am going to fit it myself + new clutch. Does anyone know any other reputable suppliers who might be cheaper? I'm in Ilkeston, Derbyshire.

I really want to steer clear of the breakers for something like this because I don't want to buy a potentially sha*ged gearbox for only a couple of hundred quid less. All the breakers that I tried, that have 1.2s in, want at least £175!! I'm only used to paying £10 tops for anything that is officially scrap.

Any help would be most appreciated

Russ

 

[jug]

i've bought more than half a dozen gearboxes from scrap cars and never had a problem. you get a warranty anyway so its not really an issue apart from the hassle of removal and refitting again, but even a reconditioned box isn't guaranteed to work first time every time. the secret is to find a crashed car, if it crashed it was almost certainly driving when it did, and driving suggests a working gearbox.

when i recently got a gearbox for my 1.8 bravo i rang around 50 places to get the best price. my quotes were in the range £75-200, mostly around the £100 mark. if you get a good price go and look at the car before you buy it, as the 1.2 has a digital odometer you wont know the milage (unless a key is avialable and a battery remains) so look for signs of wear on the seat, steering wheel and pedals. the better conditon they're in the better the box is likely to be.

if you see any signs of a previous boyracer owner i'd refuse the gearbox, nothing kills a box like a spotty teen. if you see a flat cap or a pipe then get the box from that car, old men change gear carefully.

if you change it yourself get ring spanners when removing the nearside driveshaft bolts and nuts (theres 8 or 12 of them holding it onto the gearbox), i tried everything and they worked best. thankfully the offside driveshaft is simply slotted into the box as usual.

 

[rusty123]

Thanks for the advice Jug. I hear what you're saying about finding a decent scrapper. The trouble is, I haven't got a great deal of free time at the moment, the missus and kids use the car every day and it's inevitably my fault when things go wrong with her car!?!! God help me if it were off the road for more than a morning .

Add it all together and it just isn't worth the hassle for me. I used to like nothing better than nosing around scrapyards trying to save a few quid. My old escort was made up of other people's cars.

 

[jug]

haha my old escort was too
and it had about 6 shades of diamond white on it

i drove around with a 2nd gear crunch for a couple of months on my current bravo until i found the right gearbox at the right price. the first test drive after fitting it was nail biting, i was due to start a new job the next day so it had to work. thankfully it was perfect and 6 weeks on its still perfect (touch wood)

in your situation i'd find gearbox repair specialists, they'll give you a guaranteed working box with a good discount if you offer to give them your old gearbox in exchange.

 

[rusty123]

I phoned up Vege UK (Chesterfield) to order a new gearbox for £380 and they told me that they needed a number off the gearbox that should be found on a little tag, the chassis number is not enough. OK, I thought. Had a quick look and couldn't see anything, got the tools out and took the front wheel off and battery tray out for a clear(ish) view all the way round. Couldn't find any tag or number (it isn't the numbers stamped into the top of the gearbox or the type number C.514.5.13 BTW). Phoned up Fiat who said yes Sir, please bend over and we can send you a gearbox for £500 from only the chassis number. I said that I wanted to get it from somewhere half reasonable and could they tell me what this number is. Oh no, Sir you can only get that off the gearbox. :bang: :bang: :bang: . FFS!!!!! Has anyone got any idea what this number is or where I should be able to find it? Otherwise, I'm off to the scrapyard.

 

[Andy_sx]

unfortuantely the 1.2's gearbox is prone to failure, especially if its an early one (99)

i havent seen a number on the gearbox yet and mine ahs been through 9 unfortunately (no im not a spotty teen Jug) and have changed the last 5 myself, its a half day job for old one off, new clutch and new box on if you have a good plan of attack.

as for the drive shaft, you wont need the ring spanners for the 1.2, you can just pull them clean out once the hub is undone, keep the drive shaft attached to the hub and use the hub for leverage to remove it from the box

hth in some way or another

 

[jug]

as for the drive shaft, you wont need the ring spanners for the 1.2, you can just pull them clean out once the hub is undone, keep the drive shaft attached to the hub and use the hub for leverage to remove it from the box

so fiat used a regular driveshaft arrangement on the 1.2 box, thats nice of them, wonder why they didn't do the same on my 1.8, the swines.

i've never seen any 'tag' on a gearbox before, but why would they need it? any 1.2 box would fit, even a punto 16v box would almost certainly fit. i'd shout at them to just send me a 1.2 box and if they cant its their loss (and your gain because £380 is a small fortune)

 

[Andy_sx]

they most certainly did use the regular driveshaft arrangement on the 1.2 thankfully. i know the 1.4 and 1.6 are pretty much the same aswell, but the 1.6 uses the gerabox oil to lubricate the driveshafts where they enter the gear box.

i dont know if the punto 16v box does fit, the general consensus on Boo is that it doesnt, and i havent had enough money to spare to see if it does, i go for what i know will fit. i currently have a mk1 punto 8v box on mine, the only differences are that one of the gearbox housing bolts doesnt line up with the block (back of box) and the driveshaft coupling is different diameter on the passenger side so they need to be swapped. easily done by stripping off the diff and removing the coupling from old diff and replacing the coupling from the punto side

 

[rusty123]

Quick update for the sake of completeness. I decided to leave the gearbox for a while to see whether it got worse, since it was still perfectly driveable and me being a cheapskate. Anyway, clutch started slipping like mad a week or two ago so I gave up and sent it into a mate's garage for a new clutch and gearbox. When he took the gearbox off, he found that the gearbox main shaft bearing was so knackered that there was a good centimetre of sideways movement in it, and the gearbox oil was pissing past it onto the clutch, hence the slipping. The box that was on was a recon unit (might be why it wasn't labelled up properly), so this car must eat gearboxes.

Me £600 poorer , car perfect again, with a guarantee .

 

[jug]

this car must eat gearboxes.

the 1.2 does seem to