Found a Ford Fiesta at a good price. Only 2 previous owners. The current owners have had the gearbox changed (price for the work suggests a refurbished gearbox). At 40ish k on the clock, this sounds a bit unusual. However, not knowing much about cars I’m hesitant to jump to any conclusions… Is a new gearbox necessarily a bad thing? Will a replaced gearbox be expected to last as long as one that comes original to the car? Any advice much appreciated. Cheers, Rob

Do they have receipts for the reconditioned/replaced gearbox?
No reason why a refurbed box shouldn’t last the life of the car. They would usually come with a years warranty depending when/where it was done.
What mk fiesta is it?

Personally, I’d look on it as a positive, it’s something that has been sorted out.

Thanks for the reply. It’s a Mk6 Fiesta. They have the receipt from the garage that did the work but it’s not a Ford garage.

Does it have a towbar installed?

I’d be asking what happened to the original box. Having a new or refurbished one isn’t a bad think unless you get s feeling it was because the car was properly ragged

It’s unusual, but if it works it wouldn’t worry me, unless it had a towbar. But the towing limit on a fiesta shouldn’t be enough to trash gearboxes!

Sometimes car’s or parts thereof die, unless the owner really can’t change gear then it’s possible it was just bad luck that heir gearbox was the 1 in however many thousand that fail prematurely.

40k and a new gearbox sounds odd .

What have they done to require a new one ?

Was the clutch renewed at the same time ?

There’s no towbar. They bought it from a Evans Halshaw dealership and the gearbox went 1 & 1/2 years ago so the clutch and gearbox were replaced. They suspect the elderly woman who initially owned the car from new gave the clutch and gears a rough time. Not that I mind to much as long as the replacement has longevity.

Go for it. Fiesta gearbox’s are cheap as chips second hand anyway so it wouldn’t be the end of the world if it ever did go pop.

Not sure how common gearbox failures are on Fiestas, but a mechanic freind of mine replaced a gearbox recently after the Diff’ lunched itself. Manifested itself as a nasty grindy/whiny noise, pulling at the steering and the wheels wouldn’t turn independently on the ramp (it was a monkey-feather of a job to remove the drive-shaft!) I’d also see it as a positive that the work has been done, just be sure that it was done well. Google Fiesta gearbox failure, it’s a known issue, but not all that common

Thank you for the advice. The gears engaged fine on the test drive but reverse was a bit audibly whiney… The work was done a while back (1.5 years) so seems like a decent replacement job.

If it was whiney at all I’d give it a miss. Not worth the risk.

Edit: 5th gear was whiney for a while. On Friday my gearbox and clutch died, quoted £1900 to replace

Remember that reverse whines naturally because they are straight cut gears and not helical like 1-5 forward gears

Agree with trail rat, do a bit of research, if reverse is straight cut it will whine…

If the box has been fitted over a year its probably fine…I bought a car with a newly fitted box and it had a leaky oil seal which resulted in the clutch slipping, only just made it back to the ‘dealer’.