Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[drdean]

Hi Guys

My Pop special is a 1957 1172cc sidevalve Pop based car. It was the Ford 4 speed gear box (3 forward + reverse) that was used on most of the Anglia, Prefect and Pop cars.

It has a fault that is pretty intermittent but is nevertheless extremely annoying. Occasionally the car jams in first gear! Usually this is in an extremely embarrasing or annoying location. There is no warning or gear 'stickiness' before it jams. The car will drive fine then at some point when I select first gear and pull away the gear stick just won't budge out of first gear no matter how hard I push and pull against the lever.

The only way to free it seems to be unbolting the selector housing and knocking the gear lever with a hammer whilst wiggling the housing. It's not easy to remove the gear selector in this scenario as the selector fork that sticks into the rear of the clutch housing prevents the selector from being lifted vertically up and the selector forks prevents the selector top from sliding back horizontally.

Has anyone ever experienced anything like this before or have any suggestions as to what might be causing it to jam? At first I thought it might be overtravel of the selector rods but now I'm not so convinced. Any help, suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers
Dean