Clutch / Gearbox issue

I'm having a bit of a problem and would appreciate any advice. I'm trying to avoid going to the mechanic, as that's the one thing I promised myself I'd do when I bought a landy.

It's a low mileage, petrol series 3 109". I've covered 2500 miles since August, and it's recently started to get very temperamental about changing gear. If left in a forward gear, all bar 1st will engage relatively easily (for a landrover). It will also select reverse with no problems. The problem occurs when I have reversed and want to find a forward gear again, which it point blank refuses to do. Generally, i have to kill the engine, push down the clutch and eventually, with much grunting and forcing, one of the forward gears will engage (even if it does occassionally mean that I'm pulling away in 4th). once moving, gear changes are normal again. It's a bearable problem for the most part, but when manouvering, parking or using reverse to turn in the road it can be a real issue - especially as I blocked the only pass up a mountain in the pyrenees recently and couldn't find a gear for 40 minutes. I made myself very unpopular that day.

Any hints, tips or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Ross.

Try pumping the clutch before changing.
I had air in mine and it was a bugger to change gear.

Thanks for the advice.

Any tips on how best to bleed the system of air? Seems better to fix the problem rather than deal with the symptoms.

I had a look in the haynes manual and the implicit advice was that living with these problems was almost better than trying to fix a minor complaint (paraphrasing the last page of the gearbox section).

Ross.

Not sure on a 3 but on a 2a there is a nipple on top of the slave cylinder and you can access it from the drivers foot well by removing a bung (about 2.5 inches Dia) by your left foot.
Use the standard bleeding tools / methods.
No promises it will fix it but it will eliminate one more thing.

It sounds like you have clutch drag, where the clutch is not properly disengaging, your getting by going forward but when you go into reverse your throwing a spanner in the delicate balance. I could indeed be air, or as I have had a few times, the rod on the master needed tweaked. Sometimes the nut slips, and you end up with to much movement before the pedal engages on the rod. Does the pedal seem to have excessive play before doing anything?

For air, stick a piece of clear, tight fitting pipe over the bleed nipple going down into a clean jar of fresh clutch fluid, make sure the pipe doesn't come out of the fluid (I tape a socket onto it to keep it down), loosen the nipple then get someone to push the pedal, if you see air coming down the pipe then have them pump it and then add more fluid; dont let the fluid level in the master drop to low or it will take more air in. When the air bubbles stop tighten up the nipple. Even at that it might take several gear changes until all the air leaves the system.

All I can see in my head is a 5mile tailback up a mountain pass with someone madly trying to kill his gearbox, while sitting straight across the whole road.

Sounds like good advice, and definately something I'll get onto this weekend.

Your' mental image isn't too far off. Thankfully, I don't speak Spanish so most of the abuse directed at me went by unheeded. No bugger offered to help, either. Tailback wasn't quite 5 miles, though - more like 10 cars, at least 5 of which were Landies, so you think they'd understand!

Ross.

Thanks to everyone for all their help. I bled the clutch on Sunday as directed, and while it's not what you'd call perfect it is considerably better and certainly bearable. Off to France in the Landie again over New Year, so something else will have to go wrong to upset the locals.

if you're near me and ye need a bit of assistance PM me.
if you need to know where here is PM me

I have stumbled on this again, and after talking to a friend today about a series gearbox, I think know what the problem is; your detent plungers and springs are locking the selector rods, and it will most likly be the spring and plungers which lock when reverse gear is engaged.

Bleeding the clutch etc... may seem to have fixed it but if the plungers are only jaming sometimes, it may very well come back.

You should be able to take a plate off the gearbox, and see these, they may have corroded, jammed with dirt or just plain jammed up, they are what lock the gearbox so that there is NO way 2 gears could be engaged at a time. If the plungers do not slide freely then this could cause you do loose gear selecting ability sometimes.