v8 vantage mystery

[v8vantagelover]

So here is the full story. I have a 2008 V8 Vantage with the manual transmission. The rear main seal, clutch, pilot and throwout bearing were replaced recently. Car drove awesome. They also installed a switchable vacuum valve so I can control my rear exhaust baffle manually. Worked great and kept me within my db limit for the class! Last weekend I took it out to the track and did 3 laps. It suddenly, at speed, said emergency emissions and shut down. Turned out my air intake tube blew off and now all is fixed. But there is a mysterious problem with the shifter. It seems loosy goosy and will not go into reverse. However I can seem to find forward gears, which ones are still a mystery since i'm affraid to drive it. Is our gearbox all mechanical or are there electronic sensors or solenoids that might need to be relearned or calibrated? I doubt my vacuum valve is the issue but who knows? Just seems to be an odd issue for what happened to it. Anyway any ideas, similar issues?

[Neil1300r]

As its a manual its all mechanical. Gearbox in the rear though so thre are linkages rom the gear lever back to the box. Could be these are loose / mis-aligned, hence not being able to select reverse.

[With these feet]

The cables have a ratchet style adjustment where depending on how you remove them taking out the box, they may need centralising.

As reverse is over to one side, the cable is at one of its extremes and if out of adjustment can block reverse. Ive also seen where the foam around the lever itself falls blocking the movement. The cable that moves across the gate is on the right hand side of the lever.

If you can still get forward gears I would look at this first, probably the lever is fouling before selection.

Reverse is a bugger of a job to change if it is a gearbox fault, the first one in I think!

[v8vantagelover]

Yeah I think you are right. It is most likely the linkage. How hard is that to get to I wonder.