If you find your gear change is a bit vague and the gear lever a bit sloppy it is most likely that the rubber bushes are breaking up.
There are 8 of them supporting the remote, the cost around £26 to replace with Polyurethane and are available on Ebay.
So a cheap job, but you have to remove seats, transmission tunnel, gearbox housing, handbrake lever, took me best part of a day, so could be expensive at a dealer.
In my case there was no warning, suddenly unable to engage 2nd or 4th, with a noise sounding like grinding synchromesh but in fact was the remote touching the prop shaft. All 8 bushes had cracked and a couple had dropped off, the problem with this job is there is no way to inspect the bushes without removing the gear box housing so i suggest try lifting the gear lever to se if there is any play.
My car is a 93 +4 with 40,000miles, but i suspect the deterioration is age related rather than use.
