I had noted in my for GTI sale post that the shifter was slightly out of alignment since depending on temperature, and especially when it's cold out, first and reverse don't smoothly go in. It's an easy fix but I've been procrastinating largely because I've been working on my other cars but I felt this was easy enough for me to do now to help out the next owner. First thing was to remove the shift boot cover and pin the shifter into its natural position by lining up the little arm coming from the shifter with the hole on the shifter base. You're supposed to use a 5mm pin but a 4.5mm allen wrench is just fine.
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| Pinning shifter into its natural position |
Next I removed the airbox to get to the shift cable ends. Once there, you need to retract the springs retaining the shift cable and twist it counterwise to lock it into place. This releases the little arms that clamp onto the shifter cable itself.
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| Shifter cable springs retracted |
Then simply make sure the car is in neutral and push the counter weight down so that the pin to hold the transmission into its natural position is set. When that's done, you can then turn the springs on the cable ends clockwise so they go back into their extended position and clamp back down onto the shifter cable ends.
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| Everything aligned and back to normal |
Once all this is done, undo the pin on the transmission side and remove the "pin" on the shifter so that it can move freely again. Check that all gears engage firmly. Based on how it feels now the shifter was definitely very slighly closer to the 5th and 6th gear which is probably why reverse and 1st sometimes didn't line up nicely. Put the airbox back on and took her for a test drive to make sure all the gears engaged as expected while driving and there is now a nice solid feel for all gear engagements. This was pretty easy to do and I probably should've done it myself some time ago so I could enjoy it the way it is now but at least she's sorted.
