We bought our 96 Citroen ZX 1.4 from my mother in law when it was 8 years old with her having covered only 12,500 miles in it from new. Sadly in this time she had managed to wear out the clutch (at 11,000 miles) and my father in law had it replaced for cash by some dodgy garage in SE London!
I noticed as soon as I drove it (wife's car) that the gearbox was very noisy, and sure enough when I serviced it, found there was hardly any oil in the gearbox! I presume it had been like this for the 12 months (1,500 miles) since the clutch was changed, as her garage floor and ours and the box itself are totally dry. My mother in law uses enough revs to drown out normal conversation so I'd bargained on another clutch being on the cards soon anyway, but not a gearbox!
I topped up the oil to the correct level, but the damage had been done and it's getting noisier especially in the lower gears and moving off from rest when it makes a clunking noise.
I presume I'm well beyond the stage where Molyslip or changing to synthetic gearbox oil will help, or is it worth a shot? What can I expect to pay for a reconditioned box or guaranteed second hand box? I'm in rural Worcestershire so labour rates are not an issue, I just want a dependable source for the box, I travel extensively in Mid and Southern England and am happy to collect it.
It's a real shame as the car has now still only covered 22,000 miles and is immaculate. Because of the low annual mileages the annual service fell at about 1,500 mile intervals. I service it every 5000 miles and the oil comes out looking as clean as it went in! As we also paid half trade value for the car from her it owes us nothing, and we will struggle to replace it with another for the same money. It's had a cambelt change and all fluids and apart from the noisy box it runs like a watch.