[Gear] crunch time & losing its cool... RFU's adventures with a MK2 Focus that escaped death and proves to be a free* car

[RoverFolkUs]

18 minutes ago, Pieman said:

Mine does something like that occasionally - if you switch the wipers off they sometimes keep going until you flick the stalk for a "single wipe" and then they stop, if you understand what I mean.

I get you, it seems odd how sporadic it is. Normally I would suspect it's the internal park circuit within the motor but it would usually be a more permanent "fault" than what I'm getting here

[RoverFolkUs]

Decided this evening that enough was enough and I need to stop ignoring forgetting about the knackered gear cables, I downshifted from 2nd to 1st and was greeted with the nastiest of "CRRRRUNCH" noises as it hadn't quite engaged.. I figured it cant be doing the gearbox much good. The gearstick also doesn't self-centre from left to middle - only right to middle... The little spring mechanism doo-whacky at the gearbox fell apart some time ago and is currently restrained with a cable tie. Funnily enough a cable tie doesn't seem to perform quite as well as the original design

Anyway, parts in motion have kindly relieved me of £57.32 for a set of chinesium quality First Line replacements. Fingers crossed for an improvement....

[RoverFolkUs]

Bastids... 

....

And what is the difference between "FKG1105" vs "FKG1107" that I had ordered originally?

The price (!) for a start... nearly double! And between 1-3mm between the cable lengths. 
 

Surely they're interchangeable!? I dont really want to chance it, so I wont bother with them now. But is this a sneaky upsell technique to buy the "correct" part for twice the price, or an innocent "computer says no" to a parts reference cross over? 

Back to the drawing board....

[beko1987]

8 hours ago, RoverFolkUs said:

Bastids... 

....

And what is the difference between "FKG1105" vs "FKG1107" that I had ordered originally?

The price (!) for a start... nearly double! And between 1-3mm between the cable lengths. 
 

Surely they're interchangeable!? I dont really want to chance it, so I wont bother with them now. But is this a sneaky upsell technique to buy the "correct" part for twice the price, or an innocent "computer says no" to a parts reference cross over? 

Back to the drawing board....

Your only £400 away from buying the £500 focus in the for sail section at that cost, and I bet you could find £400 of other parts to swap then scrap the rest... 

Man maths 😂

[MikeR]

is it worth checking out the gubbins under the Gear Stick  gaiter  , the left/right lever to cable bit has a habit of wearing and getting sloppy .. my zaffy was the worst , but the Focus was getting to be a close second .

not much to wrong with a cable apart from it parts company

[RoverFolkUs]

12 hours ago, MikeR said:

is it worth checking out the gubbins under the Gear Stick  gaiter  , the left/right lever to cable bit has a habit of wearing and getting sloppy .. my zaffy was the worst , but the Focus was getting to be a close second .

not much to wrong with a cable apart from it parts company

Thanks for the prompt, I figured I'd best have a look before potentially wasting money on cables, glad I did because it did confirm it seems to be a cable fault! If I disconnect the cables then the gear lever springs back left and right with no issues. If I try to move the left/right cable (to change between 1-3-5 or 2-4-R) then it seems to jam up on the forward stroke between 'N' & 1/3/5. 

I believe this to be caused by the spring on the retainer (zoomed in and circled red) having unwound itself due to the clip previously breaking and being held with a cable tie. I think it's causing the cable to sit at a bit of a jaunted angle when pushed which is causing a restriction in movement. 

I'll try to illustrate with pictures at the gearbox end when I come to do the job! 

In better news, despite them trying to upsell me the £112 cables, they seem to list an equivalent borg & beck set for £60 or so... 

FKG1107 & FKG1109 is £57, but all of a sudden they recommend I buy FKG1105, which wasn't listed before, for £112... 

BKG1105, so same cables, available from them for £60, they didn't tell me about those ones... Signed up to their newsletter which gave me a £5 coupon. So I can reorder them for £55 I suppose... 

A bit of time wasted, and I wanted to do them this weekend. Probably won't arrive in time now

[RoverFolkUs]

14 hours ago, beko1987 said:

Your only £400 away from buying the £500 focus in the for sail section at that cost, and I bet you could find £400 of other parts to swap then scrap the rest... 

Man maths 😂

Ha, well I'm a sucker for man maths but I must say that's a bit of a stretch 😁😅