Fiat Ducato gearbox

Squiffy

Squiffy

Forum Member
Hey ho,
Great weekend this weekend at Brecon in Wales lovely sunshine. Reversed off the pitch at home time and drove the fifty odd miles back home went to put it into reverse to park it up on the back drive and it refused to go into reverse. Did a few checks under the bonnet and all was well with the linkage and at gear lever end. Monday I put it up on ramps ( Forward gears fine) and comprehensively checked it out, definitely a problem inside the box.
These gearboxes are fairly easy to remove but with my sis in laws van on the drive as well I can't afford to have my van in bits in front of hers, besides the last heavy gearbox I did on axle stands was my Pajero 10 years ago when I was 62 and fitter than I am now, admittedly a heavier box than the Ducato box but the thought of crawling around on the floor and lifting a heavy gearbox around put me off so I'm taking it down to my old garage and they can do the job on a lift. Cost of a recon box £1200 + £60 delivery clutch will be about £300? No doubt and labour around the £300 I suspect so little change from £2000. The one positive I suppose is it could have happened on a mountain pass in Switzerland or France. The really annoying thing though is that there was no pre warning I.e. difficulty in engaging reverse or noise coming from the box, its never in the past shown any problems what so ever and has done just over 43,000 miles trouble free. Phil
 
Squiffy

Squiffy

Forum Member
Guess what, I said to the wife seeing as all the forward gears are perfect we'll go to a rally at Margam Park near Swansea, so phoned the rally officer to say we might need a hand to reverse off our pitch unless he could site us in a drive on drive off pitch. No problem he said and off we went, when we arrived he came over to talk to us, I tried reverse to show him it wouldn't go in and hey presto!! It went into reverse like it has since it was new.
I have no idea what happened but when we got back I put it up on ramps and changed the gear oil, this weekend we are at Pembrey Park near Llanelli about 55miles away from home and all is still well with the gearbox, time will tell. Phil
 
Squiffy

Squiffy

Forum Member
Yes I did Squirrell, there was little to no debris or filings on the diff sump plug, but I did notice a certain amount of brass colour in the oil but to be honest I'm not sure if that is the type of oil that was put in at the factory in Italy? The synchro on all forward gears is perfect and it has never and doesn't crash in reverse so it's 🤞 in the next few months. Phil
 

MarkJ

Forum Member
Annoying. And there'll be that nagging doubt for the next few trips, too!

Gremlins like this are often electronic/electrical, aren't they? But I can't imagine how this could be...
 
Squiffy

Squiffy

Forum Member
MarkJ said:
Annoying. And there'll be that nagging doubt for the next few trips, too!

Gremlins like this are often electronic/electrical, aren't they? But I can't imagine how this could be...
Click to expand...
Well Mark, your correct ofcourse that nagging doubt has been on my mind but I've now had three outings since the problem solved itself,consisting of over 50miles each time and various reverse gear use and it's still working fine. I have no idea why this happened as reverse gear in the box is a very simple mechanism and really there is very little that could have caused it not to operate correctly other than catastrophic gear collapse or major bearing failure, in which case it certainly would not have simply returned to a normal operation?
My major concern is when we return to the continent that it doesn't decide to break down then, although we have breakdown policy covering us there it would be a right nightmare which in UK would be a pain in the neck but at least its only a matter of hours to get you back home as opposed to days. Phil
 
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