The bolt on the gearbox coupler has undone as @davidoft says. Should be a fancy pointed M6 bolt with a head with a hole drilled theough it for the Bolly cork wire to keep it from coming out completely.. When it goes back in the pointed tip of the bolt goes in the bottom of the dimple on the gearbox selector shaft.
If your coupling is an empi, the collar part with the grub screw often rotates on the cagey bit. If so, realign it, and weld it in place. Or buy a CSP one.
They cant answer, the empty champagne bottle is lying beside them , and the new shift coupler is now wired firmly to the rear suspension tube.
And then they discover the collar at the front of the shift rod is loose and missing the lock wire so another bottle of champers is required.
Dont forget that you may now have a gear mechanism with a shift rod that is the correct length with the new bolt in the middle of the hole, the old bolt may have shifted before giving up. Also any new gearbox nosecone coupler may be a different length, and so the gear lever may need to be adjusted forwards or backwards a bit. I ended up taking the polyurethane blocks and the transverse screw and tube out of an EMPI coupler and fitting them in an original VW coupler cage. Failing that, the next most likely problem is the plastic "donut" under the cover at the forward end of the gearbox- this leads to increasing sloppiness in gear changes when all else is good. This is a pain because its engine and gearbox out to change a small part that costs only a few pounds.
I have spent a lot of time on it today - the floor under the shifter was split so i welded up solid now - new front shaft bush - I can now get 2 & 4th but does not feel it is locking in secure - still no reverse - all of these movements make the shift rod lock against the end stop - i am now thinking the new (empi) may be to long thus giving me a shifter linkage incorrect lenth
Been there myself. Nearly bought a new gearbox until I found that the polyurethane coupler had disintegrated after having removed the engine and gearbox. Replaced it with the an oem coupler, played around with shifter plate a bit to find all the gears and all seems well now.
If you disconnect the gear lever abs rods can you manually select all gears on the box and then with the stick
hi yes one that it is difficult to do - with is connected it will just not quite lock in at the assembled shaft is to long - i will replace the coupler with a genuine vw one it has an empi on there at present and i am not convinced that the pinch bolt to cross bot dimension's are the same - this job is a 3 rib to 6 rib change
Thought it was a gearbox problem and hadn't checked the coupling first! Could have just fitted a new coupling otherwise.
Have you read this? https://thelatebay.com/index.php?threads/front-shift-rod.70423/ Note posts #3 and #17
Then yes indeed your shift rod is now too long. Also, you said it doesn't feel like 2nd and 4th are locking in fully. Put it in 4th and see if the rear coupler is hitting the chassis here... I wrecked 4th due to this and had to have the box tebuilt. Originally I'd prised the box backwards before clamping the front mount and not even noticed the above, but it slipped. Simce the photo I bent the chassis out of the way on the off chance it slipped forward again. It was only a few mm between safe and destruction and I was none the wiser before it started jumping out of 4th.
