niceyellow vrs

Buy another one then

The only way you're going to know for sure is to take the box off and have a look.

If it's only in first and second, it'll most likely be something inside the gearbox. If it was clutch/thrust bearing related, it'd be noticable across all gears.

The child locks are definitely mechanical, operated by turning the black circle on the back of the door, near the latch mechanism, with the end of the key. They possibly haven't been turned enough or the cable may have become detached from the internal handle. It'd be quite a coincidence for the cables to become detatched on both sides though.

Incorrect. The VRS rear bumpers have cut outs for the exhaust whereas the non vrs bumpers do not. There's currently 2 vrs rear bumpers taking up space in my garden. As for interior swaps, anything from the mk4 Golf platform is direct bolt in so mk4 Golf, Mk1 Leon, Bora, A3 8L. I'm running the black leather electric and heated Recaros from an Audi S3 in mine and they're very nice 🙂

I used to run a 200 cel sports cat on mine and it always passed the emissions test with no problems, wasn't far off the figures produced with a standard cat. If a 1.8t still fails with a 200 cel cat, it's something else causing the problem.