Hello Everyone,

New to the forum, and have a question about the shifter in my car.
Car is an '05 Cavalier, 5SPM, about 75kMiles.

As mentioned in the title, the shifting is getting clunkier and clunkier. It is mostly when shifting up from 2-nd to 3-rd, but sometimes had difficulty engaging 1-st gear, or shifting to 3-rd from 5-th, when slowing down enough to warrant such a downshift.

Looking at the shifter cables, it looks like that the cable that controls the side-to-side movement of the stick (between the planes of 1-2, 2-3, and 5-R) binds a bit.
It looks like that is is the spring(*) within the gearbox that move the cables and the shifter rod back to the 3-4 plane.

Is this normal for the shifter cables to get tight at that age? We live in the rust belt here in Southern Ontario...
I looked at the cable ends at the gearbox, there is no rust there, the end rods of the cables are shiny, no corrosion there.

I did the adjustment of the shifter cables, as per the service manual, it helped 1-st gear engagement, but the clunk to shifting to 3-rd is still there.

A new set of shifter cables is quite expensive here, it is more than C$600.00 from the dealer.

Any other solution, any other suggestion?

Any chance that the returning springs inside the gearbox got weaker?
(Seems highly unlikely to me, both springs, at the same time?)

Thanks, Peter