Metro 6R4 Gear Change Naughtiness

Malc had been saying for some time that the 6r4 gear change didn't feel right and that putting it in to reverse was a particularly thankless chore. We had it on the lift to look at a few other jobs so the time was right to delve in to it and see what was what.

The shifter is a fairly simple affair, two adjustable rods go from the shift lever back to the box, first thought was maybe that some adjustment was needed but when I felt the lever it became apparent the problem was at the gear lever end rather than at the box. The car has a 5 speed box, first is left and back, reverse is straight forward from first. You have to lift the lever to engage reverse, when I tried to do that it was a two handed job and then the lever would not spring back to it's resting position.

It was a pretty straight forward job, remove the center console carpet, take off the gear knob, remover 4 allen bolts that appear to have been done up by Eddie Hall, the world's strongest man and then lift the assembly out. It was, all covered with congealed grease that was so sticky it was quite a job to pull the thing out. Russ did a mighty fine job of cleaning it all, it all got greased up, went back together much easier than it came out and was all tickety boo, it's never felt that good as long as I have known the car.

The advantage of being the smallest and most agile is that I can get in and out of all the cars so often do the testing bit. Today's test drive must have been at least 3 foot forward and 3 foot back. I'm glad to say it went splendidly, I did tell Malc I should really take it for a proper spin but he just gave me a funny look and used some bad words.

We still appear to have a leak, it only shows itself when the car is running, we need to have another look at that, it's no huge, just a bit of a drip but these things don't get any better by themselves so we need to sort it. That will be it for that one, the next one can be put on the lift then, current plan is to get the Mk1 RS2000 running next, although the Astra GTE is a bit of a distraction, as is the latest purchase, more on that next week.