Crunching reverse gear

Idris · Post by **Idris** » 26 Sep 2004, 23:15

My Xantia 1.9td crunches the reverse gear once it is warmed up (okay when cold) until I can't bear the grinding noise and have to turn off the engine, engage reverse and start the engine again. The other gears can be a bit notchy as well. I have just recently started using Citroens and am still getting used to the limpish clutch and brake pedal and press the clutch pedal so hard because I think it is not fully depressed. Would it be a clutch or gear problem? My wife thinks it's human error because when she drives she says it doesn't happen to her.
HELP!

AndersDK · Post by **AndersDK** » 26 Sep 2004, 23:20

The reverse is never syncronised, so will also be a bit crunchy to engage.
But as you have crunchy gear engaging in all gears, I would really suspect if the clutch releases as it should when you press the pedal.
It may simply be a quetion of a few turns on an adjuster nut - the right place [8D]
The pedal should have a stroke of at least 140mm to bottom - no matter how thick layer of carpets you have - as it is adjusted to compensate.

Idris · Post by **Idris** » 30 Sep 2004, 19:44

Anders, thanks for the advice, all the while I thought I had a hydralic clutch. I looked for the adjustment nut and after taking out the air filter housing, I had access to the nut(s) but I saw a rubber bush before a steel washer next to the nut. This rubber bush had split and was only partly on.The freeplay on the clutch cable was obvious. I used a bit of contact cleaner to clean the broken joint of the rubber bush and i glued it together. I then taped it up a few rounds with some insulating tape before ziplocking it. The gears now engage nicely.
I enquired at the spare parts shop and they only sell the bush together with the clutch cable assembly. I will do a proper repair soon but I dread changing the cable after reading elsewhere in the forum that It can be quite fiddly. I now have to drain the gear oil and refill it as I fear there are broken bits of metal from the "crunching".
Thanks again, regards, Idris

NiSk · Post by **NiSk** » 30 Sep 2004, 21:04

Why change it if it ain't broken? You've already fixed the problem - thats the thing with Citroëns, they leave you a little room for experimentation!
//NiSk

uhn113x · Post by **uhn113x** » 30 Sep 2004, 22:15

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"> I now have to drain the gear oil and refill it as I fear there are broken bits of metal from the "crunching".
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
You would have had to really torture it to need to do this, and if you did, the box would be very noisy in reverse and need more than an oil change!
Don't worry unless it is due an oil change.

Stuart McB · Post by **Stuart McB** » 01 Oct 2004, 01:18

Takes more than a little crunching of the gears to put any real amount of metal in to the box. Wouldn't worry about it. And than repair sounds like a good job and will probably last the life of the car.