I'm on nobody's side here but I'm sure something to do with the increased HP/TQ didn't have anything to do with it. But Also I have seen 2 VR6 trannys with broken 1st gears but 1st gear still engaged but was noisier then hell. I find it odd that it would not go into 1st at all because I have seen cracked syncros, shreared teath and even exploded diffs on 02A and 02Js and they all still shifted into gear. I'll have to see if they opened it up before sending it back to VWOA