British-Cars.org

Welcome to the DMR Site for British Car Information.

Recommendations

Parts

MG parts spares and accessories are available for MG T Series (TA, MG TB, MG TC, MG TD, MG TF), Magnette, MGA, Twin cam, MGB, MGBGT, MGC, MGC GT, MG Midget, Sprite and other MG models from British car spares company LBCarCo.

MG MGF Technical - Gearshift Cable Adjustment

As many others have found, selecting Reverse can be graunchy. I suspect this gear has no syncro and the accepted way of obtaining a silent change is to go to 1st then to Reverse. You might try tightening the rosejoint in the lower cable at the gearbox end, by a full turn. It worked for me, see below.

Jeff

Recently I found the rubber inner of the rosejoint at the gearbox end of the lower cable was perishing. Also the corresponding ball was loose on the selector linkage. I quick blast with a MIG welder resecured the ball, but what to do with the wonky cable end? Rosejoints are not readily available without buying an entire cable. A visit to the breakers yard found an MGF with an equally poor lower cable and like mine, the upper cable rosejoint was good, so took that one off to use on my lower cable.

Rosejoints simply pry off the ball. Don't use a pair of screwdrivers; these can catch the outer casing of the joint and wreck the inner rubber. It's the inner piece that requires popping off so use thin pliers with the ends just past either side of the ball stem, not touching the outside of the joint. The stem of the joint unscrews from the gearshift cable (there's a locking nut on the cable's thread as well).

The stem of the "new" rosejoint was 3mm longer than the original, probably because it came off a long upper cable. No problem I thought, just screw it further up the cable - but even with it screwed all the way along, I could not select 2nd or 4th without graunch and Reverse was not happening. Clearly the cable needed shortening, so I hacksawed off 5mm from the stem and refitted it to the cable leaving 2 threads visible past the locknut. This brought back the missing gears.

Obviously my efforts have have removed the slop in both the ball and the rosejoint and tightened the cable by (I guess) a complete turn from it's original overall length. It was a very cheap fix, resulting in a much improved gearchange and suprise suprise, no graunch on selecting Reverse!
J Lennon

My lower cable broke last week when selecting reverse.
Shifting has been poor since I bought the car this spring and the reason became obvious when I inspected the failed cable.
The rubber in the joint at the gearbox end was totally perished. Only the fact that the joint had a metal loop on the end stopped it from falling off. Eventually the extra stress caused the cable to fail.
It would be a good idea to inspect the rubber joints when under the car as grease and oil eventually turns the rubber to goo.

Rich McKIe

This thread was discussed between 22/06/2011 and 12/07/2011

MG MGF Technical index

This thread is from the archives. Join this live forum now