2005 MK 5 1.9TDi Golf (105bhp model) - sticking in reverse.

pidgeonpost

New member
Joined
Apr 29, 2006
Hi - our '05 TDi Golf has started to show a tendency to stick in reverse gear from time to time. It's a manual gearchange tranny, and as yet there is no real pattern to when it may do this. It does seem to happen mostly when at normal running temperature, but is just as likely to happen after (say) ten miles as it is after 100. When it occurs it has always been easy to overcome the problem by letting the clutch up slightly and then going for neutral or first gear. Until last week that is, when it stuck firmly and would not move. Luckily it did disengage after an hour or so when we returned to the car.
I spoke to our dealer a couple of weeks ago (before the more serious problem last week), as I wanted to register the fact that there was a potential problem before the VW warranty expires in March '08.
They are not aware of a generic problem of this nature, and did wonder whether perhaps I was parked on a slope with the weight of the car being held by virtue of the car being parked up and left in reverse. This has never been the case, and anyway I would never try to force the tranny out of reverse either with or without the engine running.
As for the warranty, they advise that registering a problem before the warranty expires doesn't count for anything.
Basically, their normal course of action would be to dismantle and check the transmission for faults. If a fault is found, and it's within warranty, then (I guess) they fix it FOC. If no fault is found, either within or outside warranty, then I pick up the tab for all the labour. I doubt that this would be a fun experience.
I guess it could be clutch or hydraulics related rather than the 'box itself.
Does anyone else have any knowledge of this fault please? I have done an advanced search of this forum, and have found plenty of 'reverse' related posts, but nothing that sounds like my problem. Any help would be appreciated.
By the way, I'm in the UK, and the car has just over 30K miles on the clock.

Thanks in advance,

PP
 

trinityneo303

Member
Joined
Feb 25, 2006
Location
San Francisco
TDI
1998 Beetle TDI (Happy Yellow Buggy, Runs On Diesel)
We're having the same issue in our 2001 Jetta

Our '01 jetta also gets stuck in reverse every now and then -- started 2 weekends ago. Just randomly, it gets stuck. I've showed it around to two different mechanics, but neither one had any real idea about it. The most recent one suggested taking it to a VW dealer to have them do some adjustments (it apparently requires a specialised tool, of some sort?). Also, he said that the transmission felt a little mushy.

In unrelated news, there seems to be an issue with the turbo, as the car seems to lose power at about 3K rpm (as compared with the 98 TDI beetle which doesn't).

Any ideas would be very greatly appreciated.
 
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