My dad jumped into the van for his first drive in a VW T4 and the gears broke! Upon inspection it seems the previous owner/garage had bodged a repair on the gear selector, as this is a common thing to go on T4's.
I went from Cardiff to Bristol to get the part as ALL the local dealers/scrapyards didn't have it. Cardiff said it was 10-days wait from Germany. So I paid £20 to the stealership for what appears to be a small bit of metal with a plastic ball-joint in it! I had no other choice, I as going to France in two days.
I then proceeded to TRY to fit the 'ball' shown on the picture into 'shoulder' on the new £20 part. JESUS what a job it was! I have done things on cars in the past and this topped them all in frustration. No matter what I tried to do they just would not fit together. I tried clamps, levers (which may have bent the attached part), hammers, etc, to no avail. The amount of force required to get it to go in was insane.
In the end me and a friend (who came over on 'day 2' to help) took the entire gear stick off, took it to a local garage, asked to use their heavy duty vice and with the correct angle/force it took a matter of seconds to pop in.
The weird thing was, I previously asked a VW mechanic how he did one a few weeks ago, and he said "it was a bitch of a job but I just levered it off the engine block with a metal bar". My effort with a shovel didn't come close and eventually broke a T-section on the water reservoir. How the hell he did this and avoided major damage is a mystery. Someone must be driving about with a damaged/broken gear selectors or he was VERY lucky.
Morale of the ordeal: 1> It is better to fix stuff yourself if you have the time, as a mechanic will probably fook it more. 2> Whenever doing stuff on vehicles it is easier to take the thing to pieces in the long run. There are no short cuts.
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