I’ve just bought a S2. It’s been off the road since 1994 and done 24,500 miles.

The gears are sometimes, not always, difficult to select, I’ve missed a few changes and heard a lot of graunching.

Any ideas? Clutch, cable, change oil etc?

Appreciate any suggestions, thanks.

 

Nearly sitting for 30yrs - yes change the oil!
Unless its been stored in a temperature controlled bubble all that time, I'd be changing the cable for the tenner it costs. Clutch if it wasn't glued to the flywheel may be ok. But equally the springs could easily have gone weak sitting all that time. If it was mine, I'd be taking it apart and replacing all the serviceable parts

 

Regarding the gearbox oil change, I’ve located the filler/level plug and the selector shaft cap nut used as a drain. It looks like quite a lot of bracketery needs to be removed to fully access and hence remove this drain plug…….or, is there another way to drain the gearbox oil?

Many thanks in advance.

 

That isn't the "proper" way to drain a BC. There is no drain point.
Therefore the best point to drain from is the driveshaft/inner CV joints. Pop one out, jack the car up at an angle and leave it for a good while (if you can take the car for a run before hand to heat up/thin the oil, this will make it a hell of a lot quicker).

The only sure fire way to fully drain a BC is to remove the thing but the above will get a good few litres out. Chances are around 0.5l will remain.

What I've done with unknown boxes or ones that haven't had changes in god knows how long on others cars, is:
- Take for a spirited run to heat up the oil
- Pop out the inner joint and drain at an angle as advised
- Inner joint back in and top up with the right spec but cheapy oil, Comma or something alike
- Run for a few hundred miles
- Repeat the above
If the oil looks as good as new then I'll refill with the good stuff. If its still coming out like crap then I'll go again on the cheaper stuff.

On one box I had to deal with, I think I ended up doing 5 cycles before the good stuff went in. I did tell that person it would have been cheaper to have just paid me to drop the box, open it up and do a full strip down to clean it but lesson learnt on buying a poorly stored/unknown box for him