For some reason, sometime in the past, your rear longitudinal link appears to have been shortened by the PO. I can't
think of any other solution except to cut and extend the link. Richard Hill on the Yahoo list posted a pretty good writeup on checking the arrangement of the shift linkage. It's post 149435 "Re: [LOTUSEUROPA] Re: Shifting issue? 3rd gear". He's also a UK member on the Yahoo list, may be a good resource to contact for assistance. I've cut and pasted his posting.
From the Yahoo list:
Dennis,
Your description of ‘arcing back in’ sounds very like my experience with an NG3 which has 4 selection positions across the gate, ie reverse on its own over to the left, then 1-2, 3-4 and 5th on its own over to the right. This was very tricky to get enough articulation in the system to cover the 4 positions. Why should yours change during a 15 mile drive? I can only think something has come loose sufficiently to mess up the adjustment. Here’s my experience trying to maximise movement, it may help.
It turned out that a limiting factor was the spherical joints in the centre pivoting arm that transfers motion in front of the engine to across the car and hence back to the rear. Like a lot of things in life, spherical joints are not all made equal, some designs offer greater freedom of movement than others and the variety that were already installed had slightly smaller angular capability. I changed them for Rose [Heim] type joints but that didn’t cure the problem because the nuts that secured the ball part of the joint were themselves interfering with the ball socket at the extremes of movement. I made tubular spacers to move the nuts away from the ball such that full movement was restored. Note that the manual does specify the use of spacers with Rose joints!
Follow the workshop manual and adjust the centre linkage such that all the rods/links are parallel as shown in the diagram.
Make sure the centre linkage sits at 90deg to the car fore-aft axis with the box in neutral, this is achieved by adjusting the spherical joint at the rear where it meets the transmission selector shaft. Make sure this spherical joint is fitted with spacers to ensure full movement is possible.
Make sure the gearstick in the cabin sits vertically as viewed along the axis of the car when in the 3-4 selection plane. If it doesn’t, adjust the joints where the linkage attaches to the transmission, there are various types, not sure which you have..
I also had issues with the upper ball joint on the tube that goes to the rear of the car striking the chassis when trying to select 5th, but that should not be an issue with the 4-speed because selecting reverse moves the joint towards the rear of the car and away from the chassis rather than towards it as in the case of 5th gear.
I imagine you’re heartily sick of crawling underneath the car, in my case most of these issues were sorted by seemingly interminable trial installations of the engine/box, but I have a power hoist so it wasn’t so bad..
Good luck..
Richard
