My journey through transmission problems. (2nd gear grind solution)

Two months ago my transmission started developing serious problems. This is the first opportunity that I have had to write about it.

2nd gear would grind at any speed, and every other gear was perfectly fine. I decided to rebuild my transmission after changing gear oil and doing an alignment didn’t work. All that should be left is a rebuild.

I called around and got a quote for the cost of rebuilding an O2J from 2001. This is my first time ever going to someone else to do work on my car. In order to save money I dropped the transmission myself. Lot of work without a lift, but I learned a lot. Keeping my car at home also allowed me to get other work done while waiting on the transmission.

It turned out my hunch about a rebuild was right. The synchro slider was completely destroyed, 2nd gear was trashed, and it needed all new synchro rings.

I had them find and order the parts, which came up to $2,500. After about a week, i picked up the transmission, and brought it home. At this point I had already installed my new steering wheel, stage one clutch, transmission mount, refurbished my dog bone mount, and replaced my downpipe for the 4th time. After several frustrating hours i had the transmission back in…on a Friday.

But there was a problem. 2nd gear still was grinding. After doing several shifter alignments, and testing the car, I decided I needed to take the whole thing in.

After a long weekend of frustration, i took the car back. The owner of the shop, and only guy that rebuilds manual tranmissions (and only guy in my 120,000 person town that rebuilds Euro transmissions. Volkswagen wouldn’t even fix it.) tested my car and adjusted the forks.

That didn’t solve anything, so he ended up dropping the entire transmission from the car, breaking the box open again, and realized the synchro was backwards and misaligned. He fixed it, reassembled the entire car, and test drove it (hard).

Finally it was fixed. The shop quoted me at $369 to drop the transmission out and reinstall it (as the gearbox labour itself was covered under their warranty). I talked to them and they split that in half, about $185. When all is done, they ended up not charging me for the work to correct it.

So after $3,000 and now 2,000 miles, the transmission still feels brand new, and I’ve had no problems at all.

If you are curious, I am running Redline MT-90 in my gearbox, and am extremely happy with it. I’ve tried several fluids, and the MT-90 is what I’ve found to work best. I’ve also found to NOT use Royal Purple in your transmission. AMSOIL did a study of tons of gear oils and published it’s findings. There is a PDF if you search “AMSOIL gear oil study”, with all of their findings.

I also looked around for a rebuilt transmission prior to getting mine done, and found nothing. Volkswagen quoted me at $3,000 and 2 to 3 months to find and assemble a “new” transmission.