[kiyakubuke]

coming home yesterday, getting off the interstate, I suddenly found myself without 3rd gear (2001 Boxster S, 6 speed manual). soon discover it was also 1st, 5th and Reverse, basically any gear in the forward position. my first thought was it was because I had the console removed to refinish and something had fallen into the shifter, causing issues. Nope, looked fine. it was late and well over 90 degrees (probably 100+ in my garage) so I let it sit until this morning, dreading all the worse case scenarios.
so, after spending the night researching possible issues, my first plan of attack was to check the shift cable. jacked up the car and after a few moments inspection saw that the cable had come loose from the bracket mount on the transmission. from the looks of it, it simple pushes into place, being held friction and a prayer I guess.
Haven't test driven it yet, but it seems to be working fine now.

So here are some questions, either food for thought or feedback if you have it.

1. is this a known or common problem? if so, is there a fix to prevent it happening again? I am sure I could put a hose clamp or bailing wire around it to stop it coming loose again, but would prefer something a bit more engineered.

2. if it is not a common issue, could there be another failure causing this to come loose. ie. another bracket on the line somewhere I am not seeing that broke, causing enough play in the cable to let it work loose from the transmission mount?

it is entirely possible that I inadvertantly aided in it coming loose when I was replacing the AOS. the shift and position cables run across the top of the engine. I was moving them around quite a bit to get them out of the way.

so that was my Boxster drama for the day. A night of worry turned out to be a 15 minute, no cost fix. now off to do my happy dance
:dance: