Need advice on 97 polo, PLEASE help me

[coops]

i am thinking of getting back into a VW, there is a polo down the road that is for sale cheap with a busted?? gearbox,

the way he explains it is the gears are hard to select and dosent look like it has 4th gear atm??

basically what i need is advice from you guys as to diagnose if its worth getting and fixing the linkages or if its worse then that??

what are your thoughts??


Chris

[Gigitt]

if it is manual... then it's possibly fubar.
the manual box is weak and I've heard it is a common problem - basically rebuilding it is not worth it as one of the bearing housings deforms or wears the case out or something and cannot be fixed - hence the gear problems.

Only good for a gearbox swap - or auto conversion.
I might have and auto if your interested in the northern tablelands

[jets]

if it is manual... then it's possibly fubar.
the manual box is weak and I've heard it is a common problem - basically rebuilding it is not worth it as one of the bearing housings deforms or wears the case out or something and cannot be fixed - hence the gear problems.

There was a dismantled gearbox on Ebay around 12 months ago where all the parts were supposed to be OK but it appeared that a bearing had spun in the housing.
The 085 gearbox has the gear selector shaft low down in the box & when the seal leaks the oil comes out. A lot of people, if unaware of this, take no notice of an oil leak & keep on driving until the box is ruined. When I bought my 6N2 there was a leak & when I was replacing the seal I noticed someone had been there before so I think the seal has a limited life & needs to be checked often.
How much is cheap for this Polo?I don't think a good running '97 would be worth much so it's probably not worth all the work & hassle. Our local wrecker wants $1600 for a s/h box & then there's the fitting. From my experience, when I installed a new clutch, it's not an easy job because room is very tight so paying someone to fit it will charge accordingly.

[Umai Naa!!]

It's pretty common for them to lose 5th and reverse gear.

The linkage bushes do wear as well, but for the most part, I've only ever seen them get to the point where first gear was difficult, but not impossible to select.

In my experience, it's best to avoid VWs with transmission problems. You'll usually end up buying another one, with a good gearbox instead.

[Jmac]

There is a ball and scoket set up in linkage set up that falls to bit, also the alloy bracket that holds the cables onto the subframe snaps causing it to be sloppy, just fixed that on a Polo i have. They are bad for Reverse, i have 2 gearboxes with dud reverse. ill be repairing them soon and will be selling one and slinging one into another car. Wont be done straight away though sorry. Still makes it a but costly if you buy it like that unless you know how to fix the box, i bought mine like that knowing that i can but id stay away if you cant. There is plenty more out there.
Cheers
Jmac

[Gigitt]

actually another thought crossed my mind.

my sisters 6n was having gear change anomollies and basically fealt like the the syncros were work and there was a bit of grinding... well it finnaly got her stuck in the middlle of the main road 200m home... unable to select any gear. 2 blokes jump in to give her a hand and the only way to select a gear was to slam it into gear as the clutch was not working properly.

I discovered that there was nothing wrong with the gearbox at all... all the problems my sister was having was due to the clutch not fully engaging when she was pushing the pedal in. There is a design flaw in the way the pedal box is made... the engineers decided to tack weld on a small triangular box to the side of the pedal box that takes the clutch cable stop. basically the tack welds were failing and the bracket was moving on each pedal press till it popped and the clutch was doing absolutely nothing when you press the pedal..

Problem fixed with 12 hours sweat and tears pulling out the pedal box (b!tch to remove), drilling out the tack welds then using high tensile bolts to reattach the bracket to the pedal box - now it was done right and the car drove like it had a new gearbox.

so basically what im saying is that you might have clutch cable issues. the only way I found this out was investigating that the clutch cable at the gear box was not adjustable and the sheath was sliding when you pushed the clutch in... so I stuck my hand under the dash and felt the clutch cable sheath was moving with the clutch cable when pushing the pedal - and then i felt the frame was loose and bending. It was pretty hard to diagnose as every one was saying either the gearbox has failed, or the clutch has shat itself... bit it was only from looking and feeling that I found the real problem - and it was NOT obvious.

[Umai Naa!!]

The clutch pedal in mine is getting a bit croaky.

Not game enough to look under there at this point!

[pontiff]

Ive pulled apart many a polo gearbox, never FIXED one as by that stage there is damage all over the place with failed bearings. They are worth so little (the cars that is, the gearboxes are drug money if you can find them) that realistically if it needs a gearbox, dont bother looking at it unless you are confident its not the gearbox (as above)

Pedalboxes are common on the UK forums, they seem to talk about them a little bit more than we do here, but then again, they got more polos than we did

Did you happen to take any pictures of where it had failed?

Happy to provide you any assistance you need in removing and replacing the gearbox should you wish to do it (done it so many times I can do it in my sleep)

[Gigitt]

...

Did you happen to take any pictures of where it had failed?

...

if you are asking me...

I think I did take pics, but don't know were the pics are... it was a few years ago.

it is realy just as I described.
If you look at other pedal boxes, then for a manual you really have 3 section, 1 section for each pedal for all the mounting of cables and parts etc at the top of the pedal assembly.
well on the polo it is like it was an afterthought... i assume they took a auto pedal box that would have 2 sections for the stuff on the end of the pedal... then thought yeah why not put a tiny triangular bracket up here for the clutch cable to attach to then slap the clutch pedal onto the side and she'll be right.
well the force of pushing the pedal in millions of times puts a twisting action onto the pedal leaver and this samll bracket gets pulled to one side on each pedal press... hence the problem. When the tack welds - and they are tack/spot welds - fail then you have no clutch.
If 1 weld fails then you get the problem of harder gear changes or none at all as you are really not pushing in the clutch if the bracket moves too much.

[pontiff]

if you are asking me...

I think I did take pics, but don't know were the pics are... it was a few years ago.

it is realy just as I described.
If you look at other pedal boxes, then for a manual you really have 3 section, 1 section for each pedal for all the mounting of cables and parts etc at the top of the pedal assembly.
well on the polo it is like it was an afterthought... i assume they took a auto pedal box that would have 2 sections for the stuff on the end of the pedal... then thought yeah why not put a tiny triangular bracket up here for the clutch cable to attach to then slap the clutch pedal onto the side and she'll be right.
well the force of pushing the pedal in millions of times puts a twisting action onto the pedal leaver and this samll bracket gets pulled to one side on each pedal press... hence the problem. When the tack welds - and they are tack/spot welds - fail then you have no clutch.
If 1 weld fails then you get the problem of harder gear changes or none at all as you are really not pushing in the clutch if the bracket moves too much.

Cool no worries, I will take a look, i've just never seen a broken one, would be good to see, but no matter , I get the idea