Car problems

I would guess at a gear selection cable having become disconnected or even broken

If I remember rightly AA will only tow withing a certain area so in Neils case he was spread across two and had to change tow trucks.

RAC will tow all the way with one truck.

Just hope Neil can print the spare part once the fault is located

Edited By JasonB on 20/06/2017 11:34:06

Had a very similar experience with a car with an overdrive - the shock of the O/D engaging ripped the spline section from the clutch plate material. No noise apart from a slight tinkling but no drive either. Box out, replace clutch - not sure if they do that to modern cars though!

Thanks.

High-mileage Mondeo, manual, although the clutch was changed no more than 40K ago when the engine was swapped.

Unfortunately one of the hardest cars to swap the clutch in, as you virtually need to drop the engine right out.

Looks like clutch isn't engaging drive shafts seem to be on good terms with the wheels.

Just been to dentist, despite being dropped off in Lichfield I had a long walk to get there, then long walk back, then bus, then long walk from bus stop home.

Too knackered to look at car now, going to sleep for an hour or two ...zzzzZZZZ

Neil

If it's a mk4 mondeo, I can feel your pain, with mine (140k miles) sitting in the ford dealership waiting for them to master the ability to correctly replace the clutch...

They replaced the clutch, dual mass fly, and the seal between gearbox and clutch housing (the seal showed signs of weeping). Since car hadn't been touched since new, the bolts around gearbox were thoroughly seized- ended up with front subframe removed, along with suspension struts to provide enough clearance to get enough purchase onto the bolts to release them, and then dropping the engine almost entirely out to provide access to the gearbox etc.

reassembled, including new clutch kit etc, to find the sealing gasket still leaked.

stripped down, found rubber seal damaged, so replaced, new clutch kit, reassembled. still leaked.

they have now realised the seal insertion tool was damaged (burr from dropping on concrete floor?) which was damaging the seal as it was inserted... I think this is day 9 now, when they hope it will all be sorted...

I have the e-mail from Ford that they have never ended the Lifetime Guarantee programme.

They say it was entirely at the discretion of the Ford dealership whether or not they gave the customer the Lifetime Guarantee Certificate.

I would insist that your dealship give you that Certificate when the work is complete, it costs them nothing .

If this occured when you were changing gears it is possible it is stuck in neutral .

I would jack up one wheel ( leave one on the ground ) and put the car in top gear with the engine off , try spinning the raised wheel and and check for any sort of resistance if it freewheels with absolutely no resistance the problem lies in the diff or secondary drive section of the gearbox or the linkage / cable from the gear lever is broken and it is stuck in neutral.

If there is some resistance try it in different gears and neutral - look for the amount of resistance to change with the varying gear ratios . If there is no change between gears something has let go in the box .

If the resistance changes with the gear change and increases as you go down to a lower gear then you have issues with the clutch or input stage of the box .

As you heard no horrfic noises my bet would be gear lever linkage or cable , when selecting a gear does it feel exactly the same as it did before ? Has the lever gone sloppy ?

Ian

Edited By XD 351 on 20/06/2017 15:03:34

I had a problem with my Mondeo which doesn't really fit your symptoms, my clutch went to the floor but the cable was ok. The pushrod that goes through the centre of the main shaft pushes on a hard steel button in the centre of the diaphragm Spring, the button had escaped due to wear on the spring fingers. This was a 1.6 and by partial dismantling the LH suspension I could pull the driveshaft out of the diff and then remove the gearbox. About two days hard work by the time it was all back together. The gearbox was a pig to get back on, my arms had nothing left in them and my mum said have a cup of tea and a sandwich, round two and it went straight on, how can it do that?

Had a (very) old Citroen BX that occasionally would not select a gear. It turned out to be the selector ball joint coming adrift. After getting extremely frustrated at getting my hands dirty under the bonnet, my permanent fix - as shown by a breakdown man - which lasted until it went to Heaven (or more likely Hell) was a plastic tie wrap holding the ball joint together.

Dave
The Emerald Isle

Thanks Ian,

I just lifted the nearside wheel, a good tug on the tyre gives over a whole rotation in 6th but only half a rotation in first, and I can feel the extra drag. That suggests the transmission is probably intact (phew).

The two linkages both move to what look like the right positions, certainly a different position for each position of the stick.

The hydraulic connection is secure.

Some traces of fluid on one side of the box, but is directly under the brake fluid bottle (and I fitted a new caliper for the MOT last month) so probably just a spill.

So does look like either the brake lining let go or the splines on the clutch plate.

Just waiting for a price now.

Neil

I had a similar problem whilst in Malawi I had earlier driven through a pot hole and the circlip on the diff shaft had come off but it wasn't till a few hours later that the shaft disengaged and no drive. Luckily I heard some English voices in the distance, and after a cold beer, they towed us to a local garage who couldn't find the circlip but fitted one and was no problem for the next week of honeymoon.

David

Neil, might be an idea to repeat test from the other side wheel.

On mine the clutch disc had parted company from the hub, nice neat crack right round.
It was caused by a shattered crank tail needle roller bearing letting the first motion shaft wiggle* about.

* technical term

Hi, well unless they have changed their policy or there are higher tariffs, when I broke down at Blyth Services on the A1, coming back from Harrogate a few years back, the RAC could only get me to Boston, which was not on my route home. From Boston my car was put on a car transporter, which was operated by a company contracted to RAC, but had their own work also. It didn't take quite as long as Neil's did, but it was about 11.00 pm before my car and I got home.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 20/06/2017 18:58:27

My son phoned to say he couldn't get car into gear, he was seven miles away so drove over to have a look, clutch u/s so explained how to drive without clutch, he was home before me.

Mike

Hi Neil,

So just to be 100% clear in top gear you can still turn the wheel over more than one turn with x amount of resistance or drag and in first gear you can still do it but the drag is greatly increased ?

Did you try neutral ? Drag should obviously be minimal but there will be some drag as you are still turning the constant mesh gears ove in the box .

I'm also curious as ti whether you have tried to start the engine agian after you stopped it ?

I have seen some weird things over the years , friction plate hubs shearing off , broken cranks , seized throwout arms , seized slave cylinders and clutch pressure springs collapsing - the list goes on !

Ian.

It was a subbie and he ran out of hours (he'd started at 1pm and dropped me off at 12:30am, leaving him 30 minutes to get back to base.

Neil, if the engine RPM was still quite high when you dipped the clutch to change up, it's possible that the clutch linings disintegrated when they were freed from the spring pressure of the pressure plate,
I experienced exactly the same thing a few years ago on a Renault, the clutch was only a year old, but when I got it stripped out, only the sprung centre plus what was left of the rivets remained, all of the clutch lining from one side had centrifuged into a manky mess lodged in the outer reaches of the pressure plate, no noise at all when it threw the towel in.

I've seen this phenomenon on a few occasions back in the day on the Audi 100 range,

John.