Despite the very long shift lever which should give good leverage we have to give the lever quite a shove, my wife is getting quite pissed off as it is stuffing her wrist. I have pulled apart the mechanism in the cab & it is fine, all I want is for it to be smooth, I tried one at the wreckers & it was worse, is this normal or is there something else I can do about it at the transmission end????

They usually are fairly stiff and do require a bit of a shove. The auto shift mechanism to the rear is not a cable most of the way, but rather a metal shaft inside a tube. I've never taken mine apart, but I daresay you could try it to give it a clean and grease.

Try disconnecting the linkage at the gearbox end, then try moving the shift lever again. If it's still stiff the problem is in the shift rod.

One thing to check - does your Kombi have a wooden floor over the stock floor? Make sure there are no floor screws poking down into the shift rod tube. I recently replaced my plywood floor, and merrily used a power drive to screw the floor down. When I'd finished I couldn't move the auto stick at all. Of course I'd put a screw right into the shift tube and locked the mechanism! Murphy's Law at work there.

I have a wooden floor but I don't think that anything is rubbing against the rod, when I disconnected the lever & pulled the rod back & forward it was VERY jerky, I then started looking at the cable part of the linkage & just about cried when I saw what was involved in pulling that apart to check it. it was very late & I gave up to attack it again another day

I have pulled the linkage apart and it was quite a chore!! If it comes to the worst, you may have to even pull the shift rod out and give everything a good clean. It is well worth checking everything else first, pulling the shift rod is a job to be avoided at all cost!! :o

HEY :bounce I fixed it, I now know why they are jerky & stiff, after reading 4 workshop manuals I found the problem, NO workshop manual mentions it but all show a diagram, most autos have a detent mechanism (springs & balls that locate & partly lock each ratio location--the click, click click, inside the transmission
but the Kombi has it inside the cast piece of the cable mechanism which bolts onto the box, the cable is notched & on each side of the cast piece is a round tube coming off with an apparently useless bolt screwing into the end of each, these screw down on a spring & ball & the pressure holds each gear position, if you unscrew each until they are almost out the gear selector just slides back & forward with no resistance, so this resistance can be adjusted by putting thin washers between the bolt & the housing to decrease spring pressure, I did this as well as cleaning out the gunk by spraying in heaps of inox(WD40 type stuff & the transmission lever now slides back & forward with one finger, just like a normal car

Well done!! I'll be looking for those when I convert my kombi to auto. :thumb