My car won't reverse!
 

Hello

I have a MK3 1995 Bora (Also known as Jetta MK3 and Vento MK3), it's a 1.8l variant which is Automatic. I'm having some issues with my car which I'll describe below

My brakes are not good at all, when I press the brake it feels extremely airy as if there's air in the pedals, and if I press them to the max, the pedal moves a bit more back which never happened before.
If my car is switched off and I press the brake, the pedal gets hard to press each time until I start the car.

My car won't reverse! My car's transmission does not work in reverse anymore but if I put it on Drive mode, it moves forward fine.
There was a puddle of red fluid which I was told was transmission fluid which has leaked and I need help to replace and repair it myself

My A/C won't work either!
These issues are troubling in summer, when I turn on the AC it usually has a loud tick from the engine which lowers the RPM by 50-100 and the fan starts to cool but my AC does not give me the cold air anymore, it does not give me the TICK sound and it does not turn on the car fan which overheats the engine.

Now many of you will be wondering if I'm aware of my issues, why am I asking here and not taking my car to a garage? Well, you see I'm a Volkswagen lover because of the quality but the garage is a rip off. In my place, a shop which sells Volkswagen parts sells alternator motor for 150$ but the garage will charge me 400$ for that exlcuding vat and installation charges. My engine has only 80k kms and everyone is going to charge 3000$+ in my place. 3000$ is a lot of money and I don't find it worth getting my car repaired for such price because that's just ripped off. Please give me instructions on how do I find a gear fluid leak and how do I repair it + how can I change Automatic transmission fluid of a MK3 Bora? I know it's not possible for me to change everything myself but I want to try doing whatever I can to lower the price of the repair and save myself some money. Any instructions on the above issues are welcomed and appreciated.

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You need to get your motor scanned (preferably with VAG-COM\VCDS) for any error codes logged in the ecu and post them, that will save a lot of guessing and check systems out.