205 GTI broken gear linkage???

Unless you've actually broken it it's fairly easy to fix, you want a copy of the haynes manual though, as you need to mess about with a tape measure to set it up right.

easy enough job to do, pop in to your local pug parts place and ask for the 2 gearshift rods, 2 rods with cups at either end that sit on small ball joints, pry the old ones off and squeeze the new ones back on, they can be a bit of a tight fit but will snap back into place.

Reg

Thanks. Looks like a trip to halfords in first gear tomorrow then. LOL

Stick your head underneath first & check the bolts & roll pin are still there. You might save yourself a 2nd trip.

You can probably get the old ones back on temporarily. It's worth checking the adjustment after you've changed them though.

Probably a long shot, but the 306 I worked on had a pretty cool system whereby you could disconnect the linkage, take the box out, wobble the gearstick, put it back in, reattach the linkage and it all lines up again, perfectly. All because it's made up of fixed length bars and no adjustment is possible. This the case with the 205? If a bar has popped off, can you snap it back on?

The gearchange works by a system of rods and levers connected from the end of the gearstick (on the underneath of the car) to the gearbox (on the passenger side of the engine bay usually under the battery).

The gear linkage has several balljoints on it, which are plastic. They wear out and can pop off. This would be my first guess as to what's happened.

Take a look under the car in the middle, around where the gearstick is, and then right down the back of the engine slightly to the passenger side and see if you can see any loose rods which have unpopped themselves. They'll probably only really fit one way.

Once the joints start popping off, they'll probably keep doing it with increasing frequency so you're best to at least replace the rod with the dodgy joints, if not all the rods.

If it's not that I guess it could be something rather fundamentally gubbed with the gearbox. Rods are cheaper.

Not sure it was dark by the time i got home but ill give it a good look in the morning. Thanks for all the replies.