Clutch Question

[GlassjawSpy]

I had my car serviced about almost a month ago, the problem seemed to be the clutch cables. the car would be in gear but the shifter would be going all over the place and i couldnt get it out of gear. The mechanic said it would be about 900 dollars for all the labor including parts. To make a long story short after finally getting the car back after a week the clutch was still having problems going into gear, he found out that its because the cables werent going in straight and blamed it on the transmission. my car is a 98 saturn sc1 with 87000 miles on it so i had a hard time believing that that was the real problem. He ended up putting some kind of wire around the cables for guidance and secured them under the bolts, after that the car didnt shift gears as easy as it used to and it was a struggle and annoying to even have to think about driving. Did he just do a crappy job? and how can i know for sure that i didnt just throw a grand away on that. i dont know much about this subject so any advice would be useful

[RC1488]

You threw away about $985 bucks. Might as well just burned them Benjamins :/

There are simple tests to tell whether its the cables, or the tranny. In your case i suspect that a 15 dollar cable bushing was the issue. The bushing is where the cable attaches to the shifter in the car. Once it breaks the shifter just moves around in circles as you described. Or perhaps one of four $2.50 clips that hold cables to the tranny. If any one of the four clips pop off, the cable disconnects from the tranny, and you have a shifter that moves in circles.

If by chance it is the cables, you must go DEALER ONLY. Anything else and you have the chance of the cables not being the correct length and it will not go into gear. Dealer cables...about $200 and an after noon of your time.

My advice...get your money back if possible. Then ordery the new bushings ebay. Sorry for the bad new though

[RC1488]

Oh and get a new mechanic...the one you went to has no idea what hes doing.

[Scrapper]

your right on taking it to another shop. ask a good friend where they there car. or just do it yourself. and yes there are people out there sell you anything. so ask a friend...good luck...

[saturnspeed_12]

yeah, it probably is the cable ends. you can get bushings off ebay for like $20 that will do the job fine. if you can remove the center console, you can easily find out if that is problem.