So a couple of weeks ago the gearbox selector cable came off the lever at the gearbox leaving the car stuck in drive. I finally got around to fixing it properly after the cable ties that were holding it on came off and car was stuck in drive again. I decided to remove the lever from the gearbox, remove the little ball joint and just nut and bolt the selector cable on there.
So I thought I would do a little write up for anyone else that may want to do it or has to do it if their cable has come off. I recommend doing it before your cable falls off because I can gaurantee that it'll happen at the most inconvient time and you'll be stuck where ever it happens, I was just lucky it happened at home! The only cost is the nut and bolt but most people have that laying so it'll pretty much cost you nothing to do.
This is the quick fix that we came up with to get the car going again so we could move it out of the way. Good ole zip ties did the trick and got it moving, but is definetly not a permanent fix.
The lever is located on the passenger side of the gearbox so the car will need to jacked up or lifted up so you can get under it to remove the lever. After the car is jacked up or lifted the lever can be removed by taking off a nut with a 13mm socket/spanner. The lever will just slide off, may need a bit of a wiggle but should just slide off. Once the lever is off you can remove where the cable attaches to the lever. There are several different ways to do it, I chose to grind the opposite side to where the cable attaches and then punch out the little tab.
Once you've removed the little tab you will need to either drill out or file out the bush inside the end of the selector cable so a bolt will fit through it. I used a 5/16 bolt as it was the only bolt I had at the time that would work. As much as I hate using something imperial on the car it's all I had at the time. Would probably be better to use 8mm bolt so you don't need metric and imperial tools if you ever need to take the lever back off in the future. Once the bolt will fit through the selector cable hole refit the lever and put the bolt through the lever and cable and tighten them up. Ensure to use a nyloc nut to ensure it doesn't come loose over time and come off again. I didn't use a washer but afterwards I thought it's probably a good idea to put a washer between the cable and the head of the bolt/nut depending on which way you put nut and bolt on.
This took all of about half an hour from start to finish and is a cheap, easy and quick mod that could save you some pain down the track.