My 14 year old Jetta, 119,000 mile will manually o into reverse ,but will not allow me to reverse the car? Help. Could this be a clutch problem, or transmission. How much will either cost? Is it worth repairing it, or purchasing, leasing car? Car also had new engine 3 years ago. Ouch! from not sure if I can afford a car payment on my salary.
You can put the car in 1st, and then it drives through all the gears normally? Have you had to grind the gears a lot recently to get it to go into reverse?
There is no synchro on reverse, so if the car grinds going into reverse the clutch is not fully releasing. You might have a clutch issue that has taken out your reverse gear in the transmission if there has been a lot of grinding going into reverse. I’d take the car to a good general mechanic for an evaluation. It is hard to answer your question with so little info.
But, it looks like this will cost you a few bucks. If it is either the clutch or the transmission it could be much more. The least it will cost is if your shifting linkage or cables have either broken or gotten out of adjustment. Hope for that, but you need to find out what is wrong and deal with the money issue when you figure out the problem. This is a low mileage 14 year old car, but still it isn’t going to have much resale value. Without fixing the problem, it has even less value.
If you keep driving a 14 year old VW you are going to have to budget for some repairs every year. A car this old simply will need $1000-2000 a year for repairs. That may seem like a lot, but compared to a car loan or lease payment it still could be cheaper to drive the old car.