My 1976 127 has a nasty problem in 1st gear. If you set off in 1st gear after a few yards the front wheels lock and the car does an impromptu emergency stop.
As this happened today a few times in rush hour traffic you can imagine I was (am) a little shaken but I did manage to ascertain that it will trundle along in second without this happening.
Reverse is not brilliant either.
I think something must have broken or come loose in there causing the lock up
Any ideas? (Well apart from you need a gearbox repair)
Ideally I'd like to source a 903 4 speed gearbox from somewhere, Please note its not the same as the 1050 4 speed, been caught by that before.
More than likely you have a sticky selector/deselector that is not removing itslef completely away from the 3rd/4th gate or the reverse gate when you go into 1st.
You might be able to dupe the gearbox into getting into first gear on its own by going from one of the other gears first at standstill (try selecting fourth to first, third to first, second to first or reverse to first) this maw move the offending cog out of the way enough for it to not re-engage.
On the gearbox you have a long oval plate held on by two (M10 ?) bolts and underneath that you will find three springs with ball bearings above them. These act upon grooves in the internal selector shafts that provide a location key to stop them moving (and hence selecting other gears).
It could also be that you have a lazy spring under this plate not providing enough pressure to locate the selector rods. Worth a look.
This happened on my X1/9 Lido about 25 years ago. I stripped the gearbox right down and found absolutely nothing wrong with it - except the ball bearings on the springs not being particualrily 'free' . In hindsight I could probably have got away with just cleaning them out.
Reverse gear - Yep. Jumping out unless you keep the gearlever held back when reversing ? - on this one you will probably definately absolutely have a nearly toothless laygear. It happens to them all !!!!!.
