I've got a 1998 Jetta 2.0 5 speed, with 107,000 miles on it. Today I was driving it and started to smell gear oil, so I pulled over and noticed that gear oil was in fact leaking out, pretty watery looking too. I figured that it would hold off for about 400 feet, I go to college at UNH and was bringing it back to it's parking spot. As soon as I pull away and the clutch was almost 100% out, the car stopped, made this huge smashing of gears noise and an instant cloud of smoke pouring from under the hood, not good. So I rolled the car back to the side of the road were it poured out gear fluid (there was gear fluid splashed all over the back side of the motor and under the fire wall).

So, the most obvious question: is my tranny blown?

With the motor off I pushed the clutch in and went through all the gears, it went into them fine without any clunking. I've been recently hearing this whining noise when I let off the gas to engine break, and sometimes to accelerate; typically after driving for 30-40 mins (it sounds like the whining you hear when a standard reverses). Would that have been something to do with this? I thought it was a potential throw out bearing, but I took it to a shop and they said the physical drivetrain was fine, obviously it wasn't.

Does anyone have any other ideas other than a blown transmission? Maybe something else that would break and cause a massive loss of gear fluid?

PLEASE HELP!!

 

the whining was before that oil thing right? because um dude........[sm=rolleyes.gif]im no expert, but if i had to gess iwouldsay, ummmmmmmmmmmmmm................................... .......................... she b dead. sorry

 

Remove your trans pan, if gears fall out....there's your answer...

 

Ok, so I've gotten a couple reasons why this could have happened, if you haven't noticed I'm trying to figure out why it happened. Could that whining noise have been a carrier bearing that was beginning to fail? And then once the bearing went the shaft fell out of place and then the big crunch came?

Also, I'm doing the tranny swap myself. Does anybody have any tips? Is it easier to pull the motor and tranny together? Out the top or bottom? Is there anything I should know before tearing into this project? Other parts that should be changed on the new tranny that I get? It's still in the car so I'm going to be able to test it before I buy it, which is kind of nice.

Has anyone done a tranny in these before??

 

My advice would be to get a manual first, give you some guidance on what you're doing.