MY SPRING HAS SPRUNG
QI just changed the gearbox oil in my Fiat 124 Special. The oil looked clean, but I found some weird metallic shrapnel stuck to the magnetic drain plug – photo included. Should I be worried about it? The gearbox works perfectly, with no strange noises.
Renee Bonucci, Milan
AIt’ll be fine. This looks like the remains of a spring, to us. If all gears engage and disengage as they should, we suspect it’s the spring from the selector mechanism that centralises the gearstick in the third/fourth position. Maybe it snapped or detached and fell into the gearbox, but has since been replaced? Or – more likely – maybe someone dropped it into the ‘box while interfering with it for some reason.