That was close.

[Sunny43.5]

Went down to local Subway in my 20 year old T5 manual 2.0 litre , pulled out to turn onto mainroad and went for first gear nothing !! . Quickly realised that the gear stick was no longer connected to the linkages , no amount of waggling the limp stick made any difference . Sitting there with cars forming behind on a flat road at the lights caused some panic , quickly ripped the gear boot off the gear shifter and gazed down into the abyss . All I could see was the top of a balljoint sitting by itself , reached down and pushed it down and voila had a gear . Drove home in first gear revving to 4000rpm and then dump the clutch to roll as far as I could in short bursts , luckily it was only a couple of kms before turning off the main road into our street . As we live on a big steep hill I managed to get to the top and then coast down to home . Next job to get into its bowels and see what needs to be fixed .This appears to be the culprit.

[BrianJ]

LOL, priceless.

I know you love 6 speed tiptronic gearboxes LOL, so I will give an update of what happened to our kombi beach.

On an increasing number of occasions it would try to get into forth and have a spack attack and go into neutral. I suspected the valve body again, after getting a couple of diagnosis saying something wrong with N88 solenoid 01. Most auto shops won't even look at them, but a shop at Geebung said they would but could not fit me in until mid November.

So I desperately rang Norris at Kedron and they only had a one week wait, so I made the appointment, and on the day on the way there it ran perfectly ! The next day they notified me that the cable looms between the gearbox and the computer control unit wre soaked in oil and the inline four pin socket was corroded. They said it was causing the computer to lose communication and give false errors. I said could they replace them and they order them from Sydney.

I soon realized why all this had happened, two reasons. About two years ago the battery expelled a lot of acid which fell down right over the gearbox (my fault, I put water in an AGM battery). The second problem was the split in the hose from the tandem pump to the head which spewed diesel fuel all over the whole car.

I got it back two days ago after depositing $1500 and its back to its old self again. (running properly)

[Sunny43.5]

Please don,t remind me of the Tiptronic woes that was an $8500 rebuild , admits that after battling with VW for 2 years I even sent photos to Germany I ended up getting a 50% "Goodwill " payment . Ok so ABC TV got involved which helped a hell of a lot , they were investigating the death of a girl in her Golf in Victoria which had engine / tranny problems and they saw my replies to VW on their Facebook page so they rang up for the story . A few weeks later surprise I got the call from VW about the goodwill payment . Ok this T5 is a manual and trust me it does a lot of work as it now has passed 360000 kms so that,s a loft of gear stick waggling LOL . New part arrives next week so all good . Yes in your case silly mistake with battery acid will kill things . I remember having problems with door locks in our Tiptronic one very early and found the plug under the drivers seat was growing its own vegetable garden nice and green . How in the hell it got corroded under there had me beat , I cleaned it up and coated it with lots of grease etc .

[Infrogneto]

Just did this fix recently on our 2004... got the 2 shift rod ends from tooley imports, watched a few youchoobs and some aussie know how...
lots of plastic to remove but once you have done it a few times for various other reasons in this area it's pretty easy and you will have a tight new shift ..

[Sunny43.5]

I did mine with the Genuine VW part which was under a $100 , only took a few minutes but admits I need to adjust it a tiny bit as the throw to first third is out of position but now as I know how it works it will only take a couple of minutes to reposition .