It has become very difficult to shift into 1st gear on my 1995 VW Golf. Pushing the shifter fully left and then forward now puts the transmission into 3rd.
How can I fix this?
Motor Vehicle Maintenance & Repair Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for mechanics and DIY enthusiast owners of cars, trucks, and motorcycles. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this communityIt has become very difficult to shift into 1st gear on my 1995 VW Golf. Pushing the shifter fully left and then forward now puts the transmission into 3rd.
How can I fix this?
As Flimzy's comment suggests, many transverse-engined FWD cars, including Volkswagens, use a series of ball-joints with plastic bushes in their gear linkages, and these can fail over time.
I expect you will find two sets of linkages - one for the side-to-side movement of the gearstick, and one for the fore-and-aft. I suspect it will be the former that has failed - do you get fifth when you try to engage third and fourth instead of second?
This is a common failnig on Peugeots from the late 80s and early 90s, we used to fix it by looping zip-ties around each bar of the linkage just before the ball-joint to tie them together and stop the ball-joints popping apart.
Another, less likely, possibility is a failed gearbox mount. This would cause the gearbox to drop slightly and thus throw the linkages out of alignment. I suspect you'd see other symptoms if that was the case however!