Seat Ibiza gear shift pattern oddness

[Sylvester]

Hi all, recently I'd been at home visiting family, and my mum has got herself a 2000ish Seat Ibiza 1.4 petrol. It's got a few small issues here and there, but it runs good and safe, what has caught my attention though is the gear shift pattern.

It's a 5 speed manual, BUT:
-1st isn't, "left&up", but just "up". Like when
you normally put the car in 3rd gear.
-2nd is simply "down" so instead of 4th gear.
-3rd is like when you put it in 5th gear, so bit "right&up".
-4th gear you gotta slightly hold "right&down", so like instead of 6th gear/some cars reverse.
-5th gear is "right even more&up", so like instead of 7th gear, is there was such on regular cars.
-Reverse is "down&up", just like on the A2s.

It's physically just like on the attached image, so 1&2 the middle point, not 3&4.


I've watched videos about same cars and looked like, those had regular shift pattern.
It's kind of cool the 1st/2nd is just up/down, feels a bit like a rally car, but has anybody got any idea what's going on, is that actually normal on those cars? Cheers

 

[Proghound]

If there's no major slop on the gear lever and no big resistance to going into 5th, it sounds like it's been sprung by design so that at rest, it's in the 1st/2nd plane, rather than the more usual 3rd/4th. Is it a particularly 'city' model?

 

[Sylvester]

Regarding the age of the car, the shifting is good, bit clunky here and there, but doesn't get stuck and smoothish.
It's not a city-model far as I know.
I've never seen cars with pattern like that, could it'd have been, that a bad mechanic had messed up something, and they fixed it by moving the gear patterns? Is that even possible? Cheers

 

[timmus]

To me, it sounds like the gear linkage adjustment has been set without first locking the gearstick inside the cabin in its home position.

Cheers,

Tom

 

[Sylvester]

to me, it sounds like the gear linkage adjustment has been set without first locking the gearstick inside the cabin in its home position.

Cheers,

Tom

That sounds a very possible reason, does it take a lot of work to fix it? Thanks

 

[timmus]

That sounds a very possible reason, does it take a lot of work to fix it? Thanks

It only takes me about 10 minutes to do the process on an A2 TDI.

Cheers,

Tom

 

[Robin_Cox]

Sounds to me as if the cable end grip / adjuster for the cable that translates lateral movement of the lever into vertical movement of the selector is slightly out of position. This is the cable that attaches to the bell crank if you look at the top of the gearbox - the other one rotates the selector shaft axially and corresponds to the fore-aft movement of the gearlever.

 

[audifan]

Irrelevant what is out of adjustment. The system needs resetting and setting up correctly after ensuring that all fixing points are intact and the cables correctly routed.

 

[timmus]

Sounds to me as if the cable end grip / adjuster for the cable that translates lateral movement of the lever into vertical movement of the selector is slightly out of position. This is the cable that attaches to the bell crank if you look at the top of the gearbox - the other one rotates the selector shaft axially and corresponds to the fore-aft movement of the gearlever.

Yeah, this!

Irrelevant what is out of adjustment. The system needs resetting and setting up correctly after ensuring that all fixing points are intact and the cables correctly routed.

…assuming, as Graham rightly points out, that nothing is broken or unattached or missing or out of place or incompatible, etc.

 

[Dogbrain]

I personally would keep it that way.
If you want odd shifting patterns, check out Ikarus 260, 280 and their other models (or should I write 26X, 28X).
If I had a 6-speed, I'd probably reverse the vertical position because I like that pattern better.