Park is broken in a DSG transmission

During very long red lights, I've got a habit to put my car in park to ease my foot off the brake. This time I was daydreaming or something, and did not wait for my GTI to stop completely. The speed was very low, but my park is now completely gone I can put my car on handbrake, and nothing else seems to be broken, but I want it to be completely functional. Shouldn't DSG be protected from such occurrences? Even a manual transmission in my old Saturn is protected if you try to put it in reverse while driving forward. My GTI is on warranty, so who will pay to repair it? What will it do to my warranty?

ummm... they should cover it under warranty but they will be questioning "what the fuck did you do?!"

Once it's fixed, you might find that you can be even more lazy by putting it in N and pulling the handbrake just a little.

so what happens when you put it in park now?

rcnu71299 said:

so what happens when you put it in park now?

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It simply does not hold. The car is going downhill, and I hear clicking sounds. I can move my GTI with one hand as if it is on neutral. I hope I never forget to use my parking brake when parking the car, because somebody could get hurt

julito04 said:

ummm... they should cover it under warranty but they will be questioning "what the fuck did you do?!"

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And if I answer, will it nullify my warranty?

I used neutral instead of Park for this exact reason....shit can happen. Get it fixed under warrenty, though I am not sure how honest you want to be on how it happend, I am not sure they cover driver error, though I know people shove their cars into park while the vehicle is on an incline before setting the parking break (or instead of using it at all) and I am sure someone doing that on a steep enough road would have a simular problem.

Good luck! and let us know how it turns out.

xebecv said:

And if I answer, will the nullify my warranty?

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not if you LIE lol. how many miles on the car?

xebecv said:

And if I answer, will the nullify my warranty?

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i would just lie right from the start... don't admit how it happened... you might want to say something like "it was getting progressively worse and now it's totally broken"

i don't think it would be very believable to say that one day it was working fine and then the next day it wasn't

xebecv said:

It simply does not hold. The car is going downhill, and I hear clicking sounds. I can move my GTI with one hand as if it is on neutral. I hope I never forget to use my parking brake when parking the car, because somebody could get hurt

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Now your DSG is even more like a manual! :thumbsup:

Playing stupid on how it happend never hurts, they would have to prove you caused it by careless application of Park..... and the dealership does get paid to do warranty work, so they shouldn't be total jerks (not the same rate as we pay them I am sure, but it doesnt cost them anything, that is for sure).

isn't dsg protected from this?

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Yeah, the gear selector won't move past neutral (you know - for REVERSE! and park) unless your foot's on the brake. Which it was

I do find it surprising that VW couldn't/wouldn't implement a control mechanism that prevents the park pawl from engaging if speed is >0. Afterall, this is the same company that wants to protect me from my attempts to vacate the vehicle over 10mph.

This is just an aside, but it has been my practice, and advised by others, that when you put the dsg in park, under any conditions, that you keep your foot on the brakes until you set the parking brake. So, in the future when you're all fixed up, I wouldn't put your car in park so you can let off of the brakes. I would do as said above and put it in neutral, then use the hand brake. I can't tell you the mechanical theory behind any of this, but it's what I have heard. I think this is true for any sort of automatic tranny, torque converter or not.

KDearduff said:

I can't tell you the mechanical theory behind any of this, but it's what I have heard. I think this is true for any sort of automatic tranny, torque converter or not.

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Yup, same for any transmission with "Park". Due to small amounts of play in the system, when you put it in 'P' on anything other than perfectly flat land, it rolls a little bit and then lands hard on the Park pawl (that's the pin that the OP broke). That puts some stress/shock on the pawl, driveshaft/halfshafts, CV joints, and wheel bearings.

It's not much, but it's worthwhile to just use the parking brake -- not only does the parking brake prevent that little bit of stress, but it also prevents difficulty getting out of Park that happens from so much pressure on the Park pawl, and most importantly it is a much more secure way to park the car. Don't forget, the drive wheels have a differential between them and one can be still while the other one spins, so only one has to be on a slick surface for the whole car to roll if you don't use the parking brake.

OTOH, if you DO use the parking brake, now 3 wheels have to be on slick surfaces (That is, for FWD cars. 2 wheels for RWD).

Once, I put my truck in 'P', got out, started to walk away, and saw it heading downhill with one rear wheel rolling and the other sliding. Ever since then I use the parking brake, or if I'm on a hill / slick surface, I put it in 4WD and set the brake.