Hi All,
I picked up a 2003 Passat V6 automatic from my sister about a month ago. I'm pretty mechanical, but this is my first VW. It has 200K miles and is very clean and well maintained. It shifts into and out of D (N to D, 4 to D, D to 4) very hard (car lurches), otherwise it shifts smooth as silk. In 4 on the highway, I can upshift it manually without the bang. She said it's been doing that for years and that a mechanic told her there was a broken bolt in the transmission mount. The other day I was driving it out of my neighborhood when it started whining (like it was low on PS fluid). When I got to the stop sign I noticed smoke coming out from under the car. In about a 1/4 mile I couldn't pull away from the next stop sign and the gear indicator on the dash was all backlit. I managed to push it off the road and noticed a puddle of a thin grayish liquid on the ground where the car had been at the stop sign and a trail leading back from where I had come. I got it flatbedded home. I jacked it up and the whole underside of the car from the crossmember back is covered with this fluid. It's too thin to be gear oil and doesn't look like tranny fluid (is there special VW tranny fluid?). I still have to check the levels in the trans and differential. Any other ideas? I've replaced bad trannys in Toyotas and Subarus, but I don't really know where to start troubleshooting this. Any help would be awesome.
Tom
I picked up a 2003 Passat V6 automatic from my sister about a month ago. I'm pretty mechanical, but this is my first VW. It has 200K miles and is very clean and well maintained. It shifts into and out of D (N to D, 4 to D, D to 4) very hard (car lurches), otherwise it shifts smooth as silk. In 4 on the highway, I can upshift it manually without the bang. She said it's been doing that for years and that a mechanic told her there was a broken bolt in the transmission mount. The other day I was driving it out of my neighborhood when it started whining (like it was low on PS fluid). When I got to the stop sign I noticed smoke coming out from under the car. In about a 1/4 mile I couldn't pull away from the next stop sign and the gear indicator on the dash was all backlit. I managed to push it off the road and noticed a puddle of a thin grayish liquid on the ground where the car had been at the stop sign and a trail leading back from where I had come. I got it flatbedded home. I jacked it up and the whole underside of the car from the crossmember back is covered with this fluid. It's too thin to be gear oil and doesn't look like tranny fluid (is there special VW tranny fluid?). I still have to check the levels in the trans and differential. Any other ideas? I've replaced bad trannys in Toyotas and Subarus, but I don't really know where to start troubleshooting this. Any help would be awesome.
Tom