Q: Loose gearbox that won't find 2nd or 5th gear, sometimes hard to differentiate between 1st and 3rd.
The gears work fine and there seems to be no grinding of gears, the changes are all still smooth but it will not go into second gear at all, it is like the place for the gear lever to go into 2nd does not exist, the same applies for 5th, I try put it in gear and it just falls into neutral. All gears were fine the other day but now this has occurred. Also the gearbox seems very loose and there is a lot of give when in gear. It's very hard to distinguish which gear you are actually in. Any idea what this could be? I think it could be the gear linkage but haven't had time to get it looked at professionally yet.
My car has 152000 miles.
My car has a manual transmission.
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There are a couple of possibilities. The first thing that comes to mind is of course the shifter itself. There is a nylon ball and socket joint at the base of the gearshift lever that sometimes falls apart, making the feel of the shifter very vague. Additionally, there are links to the transmission shift linkage that involve nylon bushings and joints that can fall apart. Both problems are very common on your car. The other less common possibility is that you have a bad motor mount that is allowing the transmission to move around too much when you try to shift gears. either way, it’s not a big deal to fix, and probably won’t require expensive transmission work. If you contact Your Mechanic, they can send a technician to your home or office to check out you shifting issue and let you know what repairs it will take to correct it.
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