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Q: My manual car won't go into gear, it turns on and the clutch goes down perfectly fine. It happened after my gears grinded, the car

asked by on April 23, 2017

I wasn't driving my 2008 manual Ford Focus a week ago, and when going into 3rd gear my gears grinded and when I finally got into gear I felt a new looseness between 1st and 3rd gear, and going into 1st became difficult. When I pushed forward to go into first, the stick would pop back, or it stayed up but it wouldn't catch and actually go into gear. Driving home today, I got into 1st gear and when I went to put it into 2nd, the gears grinded and I felt a kind of "chunking" feeling and then the car wouldn't go into any gear. I had to get a tow to a garage but I haven been told what's wrong yet.

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If the clutch mechanism is releasing properly, and the shift linkage is not malfunctioning, your transmission will have to be removed from the vehicle and inspected. Once a transmission has been removed from a vehicle, if the problem is a broken or worn part or parts, and the transmission has 100,000 miles or more, the most cost effective approach is to just simply rebuild the whole transmission. There are transmission rebuild kits that are sold just for this purpose. Rebuilding a transmission is no big deal and is indeed easier in many respects than rebuilding an engine. You can rebuild your transmission right in your own garage. You can NOT rebuild an engine in your own garage due to the highly specialized, and extremely costly, machine shop equipment required. Occasionally, mobile mechanics will take on a transmission rebuild job especially as once the mechanic removes the transmission from the vehicle, it is just simply a modular unit that can be easily transported to a mechanic’s shop and rebuilt right there and then returned to your vehicle. If you have further questions or concerns, do not hesitate to re-contact YourMechanic as we are always here to help you.

Ford
manual transmissions
Focus
2008
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