The VW 01M transmissions have serious design flaws that cause the transmission to fail earlier than it should. The common problem is worn out valves in the valve body. This ultimately causes the torque converter to fail. This problem caused my original transmission to fail at 103,000 miles and then a rebuild with new torque converter to fail after only 30,000 miles. The rebuild was done by a shop that failed to identify the valve body as the underlying reason for the original transmission failure.

The fix for this problem is a valve body replacement or valve body repair where the bad valves are removed and the valve holes are reamed out to accommodate larger diameter valves.