After losing my life to a medical issue, and working on rebuilding, I purchased a great 2004 VW Golf GL California car (which in NJ is rare), Although the milage on the OD, the car is a 1 owner car, and had a factory tow hitch installed. The actual milage is closer to 50-60k on the powertrain. I am finding that there are so many KNOWN issues and not dealt with issues on this particular car -- I learned the hard way when my mechanic replaced the leaking Master Cylinder, Slave Cylinder and the car just refused to go into gear while on my way to a necessary medical appointment.

If my mechanic had had notice of this in advance through a service bulletins, he would not have had to replace or remove my transmission to fix it which is a $1500 repair (although leaking master and slave issues are also highly reported, as well as the left driver side caliper.)

I just got off the phone with my mechanic, googled this, and found thousands of people complaining about this same, EXTREMELY expensive repair.

VW you need to make this right. $1500 and removing the transmission to fix a known pressure plate issue is a major problem.

It started with a very bad sound around gearbox while moving on 1st gear. Tried to fully clutched n sounded normaly but failed shift to 2nd gear though fully clutched. Switched it off n restart it but couldnt engage in any gear now. Sometymes by chance would engage d reverse gear but wuldnt let it out. Please help, very confused now.

Update from May 31, 2013: I found out dat d pressure plate had been badly damaged resultng into d gears not engaging when engine running. Bought a pressure plate n clutch plate kit n d proble was fixed.