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Clutch pedal stuck/gears difficult to pass, read this!

vwengineer

Ready to race!
Location
Switzerland
So it's been the biggest issue I had with this car since I own it. When I bought it, the clutch pedal tended to stick to the floor sometimes, it was not really an issue since the car still got in gear and shifted right.

I bleed the clutch a dozen of times, replaced the master cylinder twice, nothing changed. I replaced all the gaskets of the clutch line, still nothing. This winter the problem got much worse, this time on some occasions the first gear would stay stuck (I had to pump the clutch or force it out). Replaced the transmission fluid, the car shifted better overall but the problem remained.

At this point the only possible culprit I saw was the slave cylinder, especially since it was replaced along with the clutch a short time before the problem appeared. Of course replacing it implies dropping the gearbox which is quite a big and costly job. As the car already has around 200k miles, I chose to ignore the problem as it still shifted more or less right most of the time.

That's when I stumbled on a topic talking about this issue on Golf MK4 with 02M gearboxes, it seemed on this particular gearbox the bearing of this input shaft tend to turn with the input shaft and more or less "machine" the sides of the gearbox. After some time this create some back/forth play on the input shaft which leads ultimately to clutch issues and gear shift issues. Adding a 0.65mm shim besides the bearing correct the problem entirely.

Now it seems that VW corrected the problem of 02Q gearboxes adding this shim from factory and indeed they did from 2007 but early 02Q gearboxes like the GVT of my 05 Golf GTI still suffer from the issue. While that shim is marked as not compatible by ETKA, still I bought it (reference WHT001976, replacement cap 02M301211B) for around 15$ in total.

Opened the cap on the driver side wheel of the gearbox and took a look at the bearing, the input shaft had a quite sizeable amount of play and I was able to fit the shim (took around 45 min).

Went for a ride and now the problem is completely gone! The clutch works well, pedal isn't sticking and gears shifts are butter-smooth. So if you suffer from the same issue, please try this!


A video (not mine) showing the whole process:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WWChWV9Rqw
 
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