I recently had the clutch and slave cylinder (and transmission fluid and speed sensor) replaced in my 2001 Focus 1.8 Zetec. It's done 175k.

After picking it up, I drove it for about 100 miles, then stopped for a couple of hours. When I started again, I had trouble getting the gear stick far enough across to get the car into first or second - there was resistance, like maybe one of the cables had snagged. I pushed a bit harder a couple of times and eventually it was fine.

For the next few days I had similar problems intermittently (once or twice also with reverse), then one morning it went into first and wouldn't come out again. Luckily the garage is close by so I drove there in first (heh, 25MPH @ 4,000 RPM) and left it with them.

They spoke to me later and asked me to come in to have a look with them so I popped over the next morning. The mechanic there said that when they took it out for a drive it was no longer stuck in gear, but that it was sometimes jumping out of second, fourth and reverse (i.e. all the 'downward' gears) - having taken it for a drive myself, I can feel through the gear stick that sometimes the gear doesn't quite slot home and pops out as soon as the clutch is engaged. They've checked the operation of the cables and they seem to be fine, and changing gear by hand underneath the car seems to work fine when the car is stationary, although he said he'd sometimes been able to knock it out of gear by turning the front wheels manually. His feeling is that something has worn excessively in the gearbox and I'm inclined to agree - although I'm not an expert at all, just an 'interested amateur'.

Now - it's an old car, and I accept that the gearbox may just have worn out, but all this trouble is new since the clutch work; prior to that, the gear change was fine. I'd be grateful for any advice regarding whether it seems like the garage may have done something wrong, and whether I should hassle them to fix it FOC. I was wondering for instance what might happen if they'd used the wrong transmission fluid? Or am I just lucky that the gearbox lasted this long, and I should take a trip to eBay and get a replacement for them to fit? Maybe there's another explanation for the problem?

Any advice greatly appreciated,

Dan