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MG MGF Technical - Gear Cables

Recently my gear cables snapped took it to garage and said it wud be £400 to replace both cables. is this good. also is a commen. also they said gear cables are hard to find is this right??
J LINDSEY

Go to Techspeed.

http://www.tech-speed.co.uk/tech-speed_home.html
Deborah Evans

Availability of gear cables is variable because x-parts orders them in batches. Availability is currently very good and £400 is about the standard rate for a dealer charging £65 per hour and will prefer to strip out the whole interior, including seats, and partly drop the engine to get at the cables.

There is an alternative techique in the archive which saves mucking about with the engine, but requires a lot of patience and preferably a warm garage.

The reason cables break can be fatigue in the threaded ends or or a bend near the bell crank on the gear box. While you are replacing the cables, you can get rid of the sloppy gear change by fitting one of the aftermarket kits which are better engineered, especially around the joints. Mike Satur's Slik Shift appears to be the best of these. Don't forget to change the bell crank as well, because that is a major source of wear.

When you check the job afterwards, make sure the gear lever is upright when in neutral. Don't let the garage fob you off with a crooked gear lever eause it is adjustale, just a bit fiddly to get right.

Off to play Santa for the kids, Merry Christmas.

Chris
Chris

The instructions on that I believe Dieter may have supplied were easy to follow. I got a friend to help me and albeit he did most of the work we got the cable replaced. It took all day but if you have the time, it is possible to do it yourself.
Here in Perth, a warm garage is the last thing we want - like today it's 37 degrees celcius. You guys should jump on the next boat out!
Linda

Somewhere someone was saying you near a warm garage over there to work on your car in!
There are 2 gear cables a long and a short - one of them is/was prone to snapping. Are you sure both cables broke - did you lose all gears??
Only one of mine broke, I replaced only that one and have had no more trouble.
Linda

The cales are quite cheap cmpared to the time and trouble of repalcig them, so if you are replacing one, you might as well replace both to you know both are in good condition.

I forgot to add last time that you should check under the back end that the cables have actually broken. If the bell crank moves when you operate the gear lever side to side and fore and aft , you havew probably just the a locating pin and spring cover. These cost pence and minutes to refit.

Chris
hris

This thread was discussed between 24/12/2006 and 27/12/2006

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