Manual Transmission Grinds into 3rd after someone else drove it

[SonicIan]

So I was away on a vacation and while I was gone, a friend that had not driven a manual car for 30 years tried to move my car on the street to make room for someone else. They said they had trouble and "had trouble finding neutral" and now the car grinds consistently when going into third gear.

The car has 62k miles with the 1.4 6 MT and was absolutely flawless until now. Any ideas on what the damage would be and how much it might be to get it fixed?

I feel bad asking them to pay for a large repair but at the same time the car feels unacceptable to drive now since the noise is so irritating.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A5010 using Tapatalk

 

[gnonne]

Not sure exactly what happened, but I'd ask a good transmission shop if a fluid change may help. You could also try running it in 3rd gear on a less traveled road to try to "remesh" the 3rd gear inside the transmission before changing the fluid.

I'm sure they could not start the car without the clutch fully depressed, but maybe they had the clutch partially engaged while hunting for 1st versus 3rd. If one event has caused lasting damage, they really must have been doing something wrong.

Too bad so few people know how to drive a manual anymore - I put 150k on a manual Dakota p/u delivering pizzas back in the day. That's a lot of shifting and never had a problem with grinding gears.

 

[gnonne]

If it can;t be fixed cheaply, you might want to check if your insurance (or theirs) covers something like this under comprehensive.