Lost Reverse, 1st, 3rd and 5th gears!

[dekhelia]

As header, I was driving my Golf GT Sport a little, shall we say...spiritedly, when I suddenly lost the ability to select 1st, 3rd and 5th. On pulling over, I found reverse had gone too. Limped it home, thinking it may be the gear cables, but locking the gear stick and resetting the cables didn't solve it. Have I broken something serious?

It's a BKD-engined 2008 diesel model.

[Crasher]

Initially I thought one of the DSG clutches has failed but I get the feeling it is manual?

[dekhelia]

Yes, it's a manual

[dekhelia]

I've done a bit of fiddling with cable length, and I can just about get 1st gear. But none of the other 'odd' gears

[Crasher]

That is probably a broken gear selector, they are made of brass and can crack; when I rebuilt my 02M I replaced three of the selectors with the later steel versions, you are looking at a total box strip down.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52389965596_84e86585c2_o.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2nPwgwU)

[dekhelia]

Thanks for the info Crasher, much appreciated. Looks like a replacement gearbox then; no way am I stripping this one, totally clueless about gearboxes.

[Crasher]

Actually rather lovely things to work on when you have the tools, because it was my own (Octavia 1U 6 speed conversion) I could sit down in spare time and thoroughly obsess about the details; I spent more in parts than a full recon would have cost... In almost all other cases we sub the work out to a local VAG gearbox specilsist.

[dekhelia]

Wow. What a pig it is, getting the gearbox out without also removing the engine. When I looked at it I thought....piece of cake. But no. Next time I'll remove both as a unit. In fact, I may yet remove the engine to put the soon-to-arrive replacement 'box on it before installing.

The only way I could do it was to turn the gearbox anticlockwise (looking at the car from the gearbox side), before dropping the engine quite a bit, and it eventually came off. Never easy, is it?

[Crasher]

We drop the subframe, pull it back and tie it out the way with a strap plus we use a proper gearbox jack AND the car up in the air on a lift. On your back, on the floor, I can't imagine the pain I would be in... it's how I used to do it 40 years ago but my old bones can't hack it anymore.

[dekhelia]

Aye, that's the way to do it! I had a look at the subframe, and thought ******** to that...plus I didn't fancy going to get an alignment afterwards. Hopefully the replacement will get here tomorrow. Then I'll have a day to realise that getting a 'box out isn't even half the story ;-)

[dekhelia]

...on the plus side though, I noticed a weep from the release bearing/slave assembly, so that's something easy to sort

[Crasher]

I would stick a four piece LUK kit in there first.

[dekhelia]

Good advice; but I did this exact thing about 10k miles ago when I swapped the engine. I'm actually surprised the slave hasn't held up, you'd think LuK would be proper kit what with being pricey