Back in post # 215, I mentioned that gears 4 & 5 could no longer be selected.
Today after Friday prayers I decided to have a look under the van to find out what happened. Fearing the worst, I was vert pleased to find that it was just a nut at the end of the gearbox selector rod that had worked loose. Took no more than 5-7 minutes to diagnose and correct.
The rod in question is the one that has the selector forks attached to it. When in neutral, the gear lever is moved from left to right, this selector rod moves inwards and outwards. When the gear lever is moved front and back, this rod moves clockwise or anti-clockwise engaging various gears as required. There is a Teflon/nylon ball device called a "selector joint" tightened to the selector rod via a nut. When this nut became loose, the entire travel of the gear lever was not being transmitted to the selector rod. See drawing below:
Picture courtesy of Just Kampers. Apologies for the quality of the image.
From the picture above, you can see that if the securing nut is loose, the slack in the mechanism will not allow the selector rod to move properly. Whew, that was one of the easiest fixes on the van