I thought I would post about this issue where my car was holding onto third gear, initially on a random basis. I could move the lever to manual and change up as normal. There were no codes and when my mechanic tried reading live data, the car was changing normally.

I tried posting on Facebook but all doom and gloom, mechatronics faulty, clutch gone, etc. My car is now 18 years old any of those repairs effectively mean scrapping the car.

I had read somewhere that the gearbox takes a signal from a rear abs sensor and that these are prone to rust damage. At only £40, I tried this and fitted a new left hand rear hub complete with abs ring.

Happy days, all is back to normal.

Odd that there weren't codes for the failing ABS sensor, thanks for the fix notice.

@kenbo I had to look at your profile to see what engine you had to assume what DSG you had and know it is not a DQ200. So is it a DQ250 6 speed wet clutch? How many miles on it and when was the Oil & Filter last changed in the DSG?

Sorry for the delay. Mileage is 190k miles and it's due a 40k oil change soon. That's the only maintenance job I can't do myself so that's £200. The new hub was the cheapest first option.

I've now had the car 16 years, it's been very reliable, and cheap to run, so I'll keep going with it a while yet. In any case, I don't think one could buy that level of cheap maintenance and reliability anywhere now.