I noticed over the past several days, that moving the sift lever on my autotrans was beginning to feel like the 'detents' were not being avoided. The 'detents' being those items that keep you from shifting unless you depress the button on the side of the shift lever cap.

This morning I took the horizontal cap off the top of the selector lever to see what was going on. What I found was that there is a rod inside the selector lever tube that has (or in my case had) a plastic top that has crumbled. The result being if I leave the horizontal cap on, when I push the button to shift to different areas, the rod inside the tube was not being pushed down far enough to work the mechanism.

The good news is that with the horizontal cap off, I can manage pushing down the rod manually to shift for 'a while'. I obviously need one or more replacement parts. I haven't even tried my local VW dealer. The Bentley isn't very clear on replacing that rod or the top of it. I'll have to pop the top of the tranmission shifter hump to see what I can determine.

So - have any of you had and solved this problem? And if so, how?

TIA

John Graham 88 Westy (with auto trans) Charlotte, NC