5th gear swap question

IIRC, remove as much as you can so that the puller has a place to grab, the selector gear is pressed on, the circlip will pop off anyways, the 5th gear rides on a needle bearing and comes off more easily.

Yes, remove it.

I also have a B4, and make sure your gear puller will fit in the limited space. Later cars had that panel removed. You can also cut it and bend it out of the way or weld it back, but I preferred to leave it be. I think if you remove the motor mount on that side, you could lower the car enough to get a little more clearance, but not much.

Thanks. I'm actually going to do this while I'm changing the clutch on the car. My plan is to break the bolts in the gears loose while the transmission is still in the car, then once the trans is removed to do the clutch work, I'll put it on a bench and work on removing the gears. Thanks for the info. What kind of mileage improvement did you see? I'm currently getting about 52mpg with mild hypermiling. I'm hoping to get up to 60mpg with the new gear.

Don't expect an 8mpg increase, maybe 3 mpg is reasonable. You also put more load on the engine then before, although at a lower rpm. The overall efect is up to 5% fuel savings BUT you spend more time in 4th and I ended up driving faster since the car was quieter, reducing any fuel savings.

I'm going to be releasing a clutch writeup for the mk3 cars in a few days. Lots of pics and tips soon.

What he said ^^^ 52 to 60 is almost 9%, I don't think it's possible even if you are being optimistic. Maybe 52 to 55 is reasonable.