Fiesta lost gear bias

[jitsukadave]

My sister's little 1.3 fiesta "just lost" its bias yesterday.

Checked the Haynes manual and there's nothing in there.
The gears still select fine and everything seems fine to me, apart from it has no bias. Which bit does the biasing - the box at the bottom of the leaver in the car, the outside of the 'box, or the inside? How can we fix it ourselevs? (I'd just take it to a garage and get them to fix it, but hey, that's just me!)

Cheers!

[Trooper2]

Hi, can you define what you mean by "lost it's bias" for me? dumb yank

Are you refering to the sticks normal resting position when left in neutral? I.E. the spring loading of the stick.

[jitsukadave]

That's the badger. you're right

The box seems fine, but it doesn't rest in the 2nd-3rd plane.

I learnt in a mini which had no spring loading, so I didn't have a problem using it. My sister has always had it, and now can't use the car properly... I won't comment on women drivers

[d-man]

I had this problem on my Focus. No idea if the mechanism is at all similar on your Fiesta, but on the Focus there's a spring at the base of the gearstick that had snapped. Took about 30 minutes and £3 to a Ford parts desk for a new spring to fix it

[jitsukadave]

d-man said:

I had this problem on my Focus. No idea if the mechanism is at all similar on your Fiesta, but on the Focus there's a spring at the base of the gearstick that had snapped. Took about 30 minutes and £3 to a Ford parts desk for a new spring to fix it

Cheers mate, I'll check again tonight. I know there's a little black box type thing the end of the gearstick enters, then another rod comes out, through the bulkhead, and I assume that's the one that goes onto the gearbox. I hope it's just in the little black box then.

p.s. If it is, I'll swing by and buy you a beer/beverage of choice nextime I'm up north

>> Edited by jitsukadave on Wednesday 15th February 11:32

[nighthawk]

How old is the fiesta?

It's not the same as the focus, the focus uses cables where the old fiesta used rods.

One age of fiesta had the bias springs and plungers inside the gear lever housing and another had it inside the transaxle.

Current shape has cables though, but i've not seen the spring set up fail on a 2002------>

[jitsukadave]

it's the previous mark. I think it's about 1999-2000 sort of age.

I don't think it's the bottom of the gear leaver anymore, I'm now pretty sure it's in the gearbox unit itself.

It doesn't appear to be causing any problems, so she's waiting till she can do without the car for a week or so, and getting a local specialist to have a go at fixing it for her.

[nighthawk]

On that shape it is inside the box.