I have now spent a total of 6 hours trying to remove the gearbox from my 2001 Polo GTI...

Having removed the passenger side ball joint to draw the dirveshaft out of the way and spent a lot of time moving cable/pipe brackets out of the way and scarping my nuckles appart trying to shift the bolts holding engine and gearbox together...

Finaly managed to get the gearbox to pop off the engine, it will happily move about an inch, but it wont budge any firther, it just jams on something, Either inside the bell housing, or it clashes with the subframe or chassis members...


Does anyone know the trick for removing these gearboxes...Surley it cant be this hard!!!!!

Try putting a jack under the sump and taking off one of the engine mounts, then let down your jack a little to put the engine/gearbox at a slight angle to hopefully give you enough room to get the gearbox off

Tried that one...been wiggling and tugging at it and it still wont come off...Its most bizare and extremly anoying!

i had the same sort of prob with my rs. a full day pulling the fooker still didnt get it off. the box was hitting the back member that i couldnt see lol. have a good look all round the box. adam

make sure its missing the anti roll bar aswell

have you taken the gear linkage off ??

[Edited on 29/12/07 by oadamo]

[Edited on 29/12/07 by oadamo]

Yup...gear linkage is off...(not looking forwards to putting that bugger back on)...

And its missing the ARB...Im sure its fouling on the subframe somewhere...Its just so tricky to actually see whats going on..

Hopefully with a nights sleep and fresh eyes it should just slide out like a slippery thing...If not im going to get angry again and say rude words!

Don't know if yours is the same but some VW models have a small plate bolted to the gearbox near the O/S drive shaft. If you don't take the plate off the box will move out a bit and you wont be able to take it out any further. Once watched an apprentice spend an hour trying to get a box out because he wouldn't listen Also some you have to get the flywheel in the correct position so that a cut out in the back of the flywheel clears the drive shaft flange. Worth checking!

^^^ What he said. The dirve shaft flange manages to catch virtually everything on the way out, although i've not managed to hit the flywheel yet. You may find you have to rotate the box quit a lot around the axis of the crankshaft/input shaft to get it to clear things