Said Altroz is a manual gearbox variant and has 5 forward speed ratios and 1 for reverse
Buying a new car is a special moment for anyone. But when this new car gets dysfunctional, owners will definitely feel that they bought a lemon. Ranjeet Soni from Gonda, Uttar Pradesh, was a proud owner of his Tata Altroz until he covered 110 km in his new car. He claims that he bought a headache instead of a Tata Altroz.
Tata Altroz gearbox not working
Said Tata Motors Altroz was bought in Lucknow and the manual gearbox just stopped working within 110 km. Owner Ranjeet Soni must be returning home (Gonda) from Lucknow, which is 120 km away. Soon, he faced gearbox issues in his brand-new car, making it technically unusable.
Ranjeet Soni demonstrates how his brand new Tata Altroz equipped with a manual gearbox is totally unusable. In the YouTube video by Prateek Singh, we can see owner slotting the gear in left slots (1st and 2nd gear) or right slots (5th and Reverse). But every time he does so, gear selector falls back to centre column selecting either 3rd or 4th gear.
In essence, Mr. Soni can’t shift in reverse as it goes into 4th gear and if he slots into 1st gear, it goes into 3rd gear. Unfortunately, he has resorted to manually pushing the car to go in reverse, which defeats the purpose of owning a car in the first place. Mr Soni directly blames Tata Motors dealership in Lucknow, where he bought his Altroz.
He expressed his concerns about facing such major problems within initial hours of ownership and imagining what future might hold. Mr Soni further claims that Tata Motors hasn’t responded properly and he is sceptical about the future of his car’s ownership.
What could be the problem?
Looking at Mr Soni’s video, we can see faulty operation of its 5-speed gearbox. In cars like Altroz, gear selector is not directly connected to gearbox. Instead, we have two gear shift cables in the selector that slot gears in transmission unit.
There will be two cables, one for 1st, 3rd and 5th gears and the other for 2nd, 4th and reverse. The actual springs in the mechanism are working, but they don’t hold their spot in selected gear. This might be faulty gear selector cables or linkages. Because the gears don’t hold their positions, gear shift linkage bushings might be faulty as well.
Considering this is a brand new car, instead of being faulty, this could be improperly assembled. Either way, non-technical people can’t fix this in a pinch and this should not have happened in the first place. Tata Motors seems to be building a reputation for bad after-sales service quality, despite making some of the best cars in India.
