TheSamba.com :: View topic - Auto Stick SOLENOID for 72 Super Beetle can`t find ?

Mon Mar 27, 2023 7:53 am

I would think it's the brown one with the black electrical tape. Here is a picture of mine (need to rotate 90 degrees to match yours). You can see my brown wire and spade connector.

Mon Mar 27, 2023 4:36 pm

Markymarc wrote: I took a picture here with a mess under the backseat and I’m not aware of where any of these loose wires go I’m looking for the black wire coming from the shifter through the tunnel into the backseat which I don’t see other than a small one it’s going to a regulator That I’m not sure what the relay that I’m not sure what or where it’s going ?

Tom is correct, your shifter (ground) wire to the control valve solenoid is the one with the electric tape on it. It should be coming from the bottom contact in your shifter, run alongside the driver's side transmission, through one of those VW clear plastic connectors (you can see this connector in your photo), through the back of the floor pan.

When VW installed these at the factory, they simply left the spade connector off the other end of the contact wire until AFTER they had run it through the small hole in the bottom of the shifter, then routed it alongside the tunnel and THEN put the spade connector on before plugging it into that side of the clear plastic connector.

After the wire passes through the floor pan toward the back of the car, it actually runs to the neutral safety switch on your transmission. The main reason it does this is that the switch acts as a temporary ground to keep the clutch disengaged when you are passing through neutral laterally (i.e. left to right) when shifting gears. In neutral is the only gear shifter position you can start the car due to the starter wire grounding out through that switch when the gear shifter is in gear, so it basically accomplishes two tasks.
So you may check the connection of the wire plug on your neutral safety switch. It is on the driver's side of the transmission, up toward the front:

Make sure the shifter wire has a good connection at that switch.

Just for shicks and gittles, try THIS test:

First make sure your shifter contacts are adjusted properly using the video posted above. Then:

Remove the shifter wire from the control valve solenoid. Then attach a jumper lead from that bare end of your blue contact shifter wire STRAIGHT to the terminal on the control valve, this way you will be bypassing the neutral safety switch. Then see if it will shift.
If it still doesn't shift, my guess is you have a bad clutch servo and your problem is not electrical but mechanical.

Tue Mar 28, 2023 7:50 am

[

quote="FallyFire"]

Here's a great representation of the Bentley manual instructions for adjusting the shifter properly. This helped me a ton when I did my contact point and it was SPOT on. The instructions at 2:30 and on are really important. [/quote]

The video was more than helpful! After tracking and testing the wires and found solenoid working and the previous dork that replaced the wire prior had cut the wire in 3 different sections within the original loom. So we then ran a new negative wire from the wire coming through the tunnel from the stick shift under the back seat and ran to the solenoid and Walla ! Then with the fine-tuning adjustments at the shifter with video smooth as silk. Can`t say Thank you enough for the help suggestions and guidance friends!

Tue Mar 28, 2023 8:00 am

sb001 wrote: Markymarc wrote: I took a picture here with a mess under the backseat and I’m not aware of where any of these loose wires go I’m looking for the black wire coming from the shifter through the tunnel into the backseat which I don’t see other than a small one it’s going to a regulator That I’m not sure what the relay that I’m not sure what or where it’s going ?

Tom is correct, your shifter (ground) wire to the control valve solenoid is the one with the electric tape on it. It should be coming from the bottom contact in your shifter, run alongside the driver's side transmission, through one of those VW clear plastic connectors (you can see this connector in your photo), through the back of the floor pan.

When VW installed these at the factory, they simply left the spade connector off the other end of the contact wire until AFTER they had run it through the small hole in the bottom of the shifter, then routed it alongside the tunnel and THEN put the spade connector on before plugging it into that side of the clear plastic connector.

After the wire passes through the floor pan toward the back of the car, it actually runs to the neutral safety switch on your transmission. The main reason it does this is that the switch acts as a temporary ground to keep the clutch disengaged when you are passing through neutral laterally (i.e. left to right) when shifting gears. In neutral is the only gear shifter position you can start the car due to the starter wire grounding out through that switch when the gear shifter is in gear, so it basically accomplishes two tasks.
So you may check the connection of the wire plug on your neutral safety switch. It is on the driver's side of the transmission, up toward the front:

Make sure the shifter wire has a good connection at that switch.

Just for shicks and gittles, try THIS test:

First make sure your shifter contacts are adjusted properly using the video posted above. Then:

Remove the shifter wire from the control valve solenoid. Then attach a jumper lead from that bare end of your blue contact shifter wire STRAIGHT to the terminal on the control valve, this way you will be bypassing the neutral safety switch. Then see if it will shift.
If it still doesn't shift, my guess is you have a bad clutch servo and your problem is not electrical but mechanical.

Thank you for your help it is now working, and I found that switch on the tranny saturated in oil so it was cleaned and will replace the protective boot that was over it as well that was torn up.

Tue Mar 28, 2023 12:37 pm

Awesome good to hear you got it running!
Usually with the autostick it is something simple, external to the transmission itself, and cheap/ easy to fix-- which is why it has a very underserved bad rep for unreliability, because lots of VW "mechanics" back in the day didn't know how to diagnose the entire system, and just told folks they needed a whole new tranny. VERY rarely is that the case- our original autostick lasted for 44 years before the clutch finally gave up the ghost; the used one we replaced it with has lasted 12 years now.

Tue Mar 28, 2023 6:13 pm

Yep I've found that virtually all autostick troubleshooting steps can be completed with simple hand tools a little bit of know-how.