Vilhuer

Every now and then there is discussion about someone having found inch long piece of metal from gearbox magnet. Since I had parts out for cleaning decided to take few pics of the system. These bolt to gearbox cover on '82-95 MY manual boxes.











Purpose of the system is to force gear lever from 1st to 2nd and not to allow it to go to reverse unless first going into neutral. System will work standing still even when spring is broken but migth fail while driving. Small hook craps to selector and forces it sideways into 2/3 plane when coming from 1st but gets out of the way when moving from reverse to 1st.

When flat spring breaks (and it will eventually) it will hopefully end up into magnet. Other option is that it ends up between gears and at worst takes out entire gearbox. I would recommend spring to be changed every 5 years just in case. This is cheap insurance compared to what new gears etc cost.

Imo000

First time I changed the trans oil, I found that atached to the drain plug. Do you have to drop the trans to get to it?

GregBBRD

Good luck getting one. They have joined the list of pieces that are no longer available.

greg brown

Vilhuer

Haven't tried it but suspect its possible to take top cover down without droping trans. Nothing preventing from trying at least.

Its probably possible to engineer better solution for this using coil spring. Haven't had time to really look into it yet. Will try.

fraggle

bump old thread... Was this ever re-engineered by anyone? OR was I asleep somewhere?

Vilhuer

Since I got new spring for GTS there hasn't been need to do anything yet. Since 928 303 287 01 is still available from Porsche and only costs $10-20 its easier to change it every 5 years than make permanent fix. Still, it would be interesting to design something better and I have few ideas which probably work.

Ad0911

I have read all the posts about the floppy gearbox lever. I checked on my car (1978 ) today. I feel no spring action from 2/3 to 4/5. There is some spring action from R/1 to 2/3. At the moment the car is without engine, exhaust, fuel tank, rear bumper so this might be the right time to do this job (new spring) as well. I didn't plan on doing any work on the gearbox because shifting was good in all gears. I did't find any large metalparts in the drainplug magnet and in the transmissionoil but I did find very small metalparts on the magnet. My questions:
- Is there only one spring for both spring actions? Seems like there should be two springs. I could find only 928 303 287 01
- Can this spring be exchanged without tanking apart the whole gearbox (which I certainly will not do)
- Can this job be performed by a reasonably capable mechanic like me? (did WP/TB job, put in new bearings in TT, lots of aircooled P-car experience but not a trained mechanic, never done a gearbox

Thanks for any advise

BC

read the forum post by "JohnV" who did a nice reverse-spring arrangement to make that gear lever more "sprung"

a4sfed928

I think this is normal for your MY 78. I did fabricate a spring system using factory parts to spring load 4/5 gate without altering the spring. There was someone else that did this but he mangled a factory spring to do it, and I suspect it will break.

aggravation

Is it easy to replace? What has to come apart/down to get the old one out and new one in?

Vilhuer

Gearbox top cover needs to be taken out. It can be done once gearbox is lowered little. To do this rear subframe needs to be unbolted from body.

Alan

There are two springs but seems not all years had both. I can't imagine driving a manual without the 2/3 biassing (but I suppose you must get used to it)

Alan

Mike Frye

I'm not sure this is the same thing you refer to (although I haven't been in there). I think the piece that's supposed to return the lever to the 2/3 plane is different from the reverse lockout spring.

My car was like yours, clearly some spring resistance when you want to go from 2/3 to 1/R, but almost none holding it over from 4/5 to 2/3. Yesterday mine broke and now I've got a nearly dead stick. All the gears are where they belong, but without that spring there doesn't seem to be anything holding me from going from 1 to R and it's really hard to find them all.

Having replaced all of the other parts of the shift linkages in the past 12 months, this was naturally the next thing to go.

If yours has the same problem I think mine has now, it's more complicated than the reverse lockout spring.

Maybe Errka or someone can describe the difference and what each would take to fix? Also how about a parts list of WYAITS for us noobs who are about to attempt this for the first time?

Vilhuer

There are two totally different spring setups for sideways spring ('78-84 and '85-95) and only one reverse gear lock spring ('82-95). Both of those sideways spring setups have two different subtypes.

Early sideways spring style uses one ('78-81) or two ('82-84) coil springs around gearbox internal selector shaft to twist shaft towards 2/3 gear plane. In case of '78-81 there isn't anything to push selector towards 2/3 from 4/5 plane since single spring only takes care of R/1 to 2/3 movement. AFAIK second spring can be added to '78-81 gearboxes without any other changes.

Late sideways spring style uses one flat spring mounted to special bolt/nut assembly on RH side of the gearbox. There is one other part included into this setup which mounts to internal selector shaft. There is two different versions ('85-86 and '87-95) of above three parts and also one or more gear pair selector rod(s) inside gearbox are changed too because of flat spring setup change.

Just so that things wouldn't be too simple and easy to explain there is also another separate spring setup in '85-95 gearboxes and there are two totally different versions of it too ('85-86 and '87-95). Purpose of this coil spring and few other related parts is to keep selector either in gear or in neural position. This setup sort of pushes internal selector shaft all the way in gear when it is moved even little away from neutral. If one would want to install this setup to earlier box it would require completelly new gearbox casing.

Ad0911

Thank you Erkka,
I think I can conclude that my '78 does not have and never had a spring load from 4/5 to 2/3. From your explanation it doesn't have the leafspring called "blattfeder 928 303 287 01". So I shouldn't be worried about a broken leafspring either. This is quite a relief! Or is the blattfeder still there for the reverse gear lock?