I noticed over the past several days, that moving the sift lever on my
autotrans was beginning to feel like the 'detents' were not being
avoided.  The 'detents' being those items that keep you from shifting
unless you depress the button on the side of the shift lever cap.

This morning I took the horizontal cap off the top of the selector
lever to see what was going on.  What I found was that there is a rod
inside the selector lever tube that has (or in my case had) a plastic
top that has crumbled.  The result being if I leave the horizontal cap
on, when I push the button to shift to different areas, the rod inside
the tube was not being pushed down far enough to work the mechanism.

The good news is that with the horizontal cap off, I can manage
pushing down the rod manually to shift for 'a while'.  I obviously
need one or more replacement parts.  I haven't even tried my local VW
dealer.  The Bentley isn't very clear on replacing that rod or the top
of it.  I'll have to pop the top of the tranmission shifter hump to
see what I can determine.

So - have any of you had and solved this problem?  And if so, how?

TIA

John Graham
88 Westy (with auto trans)
Charlotte, NC