SKCC - Southern Kit Car Club. A Club for kit car owners across Southern England. Kent, Sussex, East Hants, Surrey, Berks, Middlesex, London

I have a Westfield fitted with a 2.0 Zetec coupled to a 5 Speed Type 9 gearbox.... I was out for a drive on Saturday with my wife (.. slow "Morgan mode") , came up to a roundabout, changed down a gear, put my foot down ... and the car was effectively in neutral! Fortunately we managed to roll into a handy lay-by. To cut a long story short we came back home on the back of a flatbed.

I started the investigation with the hope that it was something simple but after checking the extended gear selector, clutch cable etc and other simple things, I took the engine out and it appears that the clutch is OK, clutch release lever and bearing are OK , which leaves the gearbox itself. I moved the car when it was "in gear" and the input shaft appeared to rotate , but you could grab hold of it and easily move it in either direction with no affect on the propshaft/wheels.

I will get around to removing the gearbox next week (off to the British GP this weekend!) but wondered if anyone has any ideas about the cause of these symptoms... I've had a gearbox fail on before but never so suddenly, completely and quietly!

Did you try all the gears, did you gets a bag of bolts sound.

They don't usually just give up like that it sounds like a selector problem to me. If it was anything else in the gearbox surely you'd have had a lot of horrible noises coming from it

i've never had one totally fail, have had the usual baulk ring gear issues associated with changing too quick on a type 9, that's just a 'graunch' type noise. As above, you sure its not a selector issue? No idea what the access is like from above on your westie - maybe you can investigate that way first?

Thanks for the comments. The car is fitted with a gearbox extension that moves the gear lever back 5", I removed this and checked it over, all seems fine. Its then possible to access the selector directly (shown below),

This can be moved about to select the gears (normally) , it seems to move with a reasonable action (i.e. its not completely loose) but apparently doesn't engage anything. There's no nasty noises , no "bag of bolts" sound. It is as if the internally the selector rod is moving about but not actually doing anything.... I've looked at diagrams but having never actually been inside a type 9 gearbox I don't know if some failure could allow it to move reasonably, but not actually engage with any gear???

locost220 wrote:Did you try all the gears, did you gets a bag of bolts sound.

Moved the selector about in all of the positions thta you'd expect gears to be present... but not .. seems internally disconnected somehow, no mechanical sounds at all.

Matth93 wrote:They don't usually just give up like that it sounds like a selector problem to me. If it was anything else in the gearbox surely you'd have had a lot of horrible noises coming from it

Thanks Matt , that's what I was thinking, but internally somehow... see above.

erm, not much for me to say as heading above my pay grade.

greenwoo wrote:i've never had one totally fail, have had the usual baulk ring gear issues associated with changing too quick on a type 9, that's just a 'graunch' type noise. As above, you sure its not a selector issue? No idea what the access is like from above on your westie - maybe you can investigate that way first?

I've looked at the selector bit (external) see above ... I've always had a few selection issues ... now I don't, which I suppose is positive!

Trying to load a picture from my phone but can't, there is a pear shaped piece on the selector shaft that is held on with a scroll pin, the pear bit moves between the selector forks and I think the scroll pin has broken.
To clarify you would have to take the top cover off and from and replace it from there as well.