Smiley wrote:Hey man.
It's a indication that the gearbox is on the way out.
The first swinger box that I had in my Baja would pop out of 4th gear while cruising down the highway once in a blue moon. Then it slowly got more and more frequent until it wouldn't stay in there at all by itself. I ended up having an occy strap hooked under the edge of the rail that holds the front of the backseat up, then hooked it around the top of the gearstick to hold it into gear.
One other thing to check before this though is whether you gearstick is adjusted properly in the tunnel. Because you said it was 2nd and 4th and they are both on one side of the gearstick. Perhaps the gearstick is slightly too far forward in the car so you're not getting quite enough throw to put it properly into those 2 gears.
Smiley 🙂
+1 I had my 1st vw do this once in 1st gear, then it got more frequent till the point I had no 1st gear. got a 2nd hand box, then took the old one out and did a swap. while the old crappy one was out I dissembled it and found total destruction of the pinion bearing which destroyed 1st gear in the process. there was teeth and bits of roller bearing everywhere and all the gears and bearings were damaged from the metal pieces floating around.
the strange part there was no noise from the box when this happen.
A rule of thumb I have noticed, a lot of transmissions fail 3 times as bad as the sound they make.
Last week I saw my boss's son's astra transaxle with only 70k on the whole car, was starting to make a moaning sound, just a light moan. We went to pick the car up and the head gearbox mechanic showed us the inside. completely f**ked, all the gears had teeth missing, bearings all damaged. all from one spider gear breaking a tooth off from front end hop in the wet.
you can try adjusting the shifter mechanism but thats what I was hoping would fix mine but deep down I knew it was toast. one tip! always expect the worst
🥲
