Eeekk! Trans or Diff?!

[slo95tsi]

(I did search threads, nothing seems to be relevant to my situation.) Car: 95 awd tsi. I was driving at about 45mph and I hit a small pothole, nothing too big, and all of a sudden my car started jerking back and fourth. It felt like my brakes were locking up causing me to stop abruptly. I proceeded to shut her down and could not move, holding up traffic. I started it back up and put it in 1st and started to move forward very slowly and while i was moving i could hear what sounded like metal pieces scraping and snapping right around the front drivers side wheel.

So I pulled into an apartment complex and jacked the car up taking both front wheels off seeing if there was anything that may gotten lodged in the rotors or whatnot. Nothing. Everything from the axles, rotors, pads, lower control arms, everything was solid. No loose parts, no leaks, nada. I turned the front wheels and the sound was not there. The metal screeching only comes on when in gear, either in 1st or second, causing my car to stop/jerk. So I think my trans or diff took a dump on me, not sure which one. I had a flatbed come tow it to a local pep boys shop and they too concluded that the suspension was solid and thought that it might be tranny issues as well.

Does anyone know what this might be? Anyone experience anything like this? Sounds like metal scrapping against something, which is definitely not good. I never launched my car, never abused it. I maintain it very well so i dont know what this could be i hope nothing too big. Taking it to the local tranny shop to get it checked out tomorrow and i just wanted to go in there with some ideas as to what it might be so they dont try to rip me off. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks! ( gotta hate em' and love em' dsms)

 

[slo95tsi]

no one can help me out?!

 

[wont_luz]

I can tell you that this recently happened to me...but I didn't hit a pothole. I was driving along doing about 65 and heard a loud pop...and the car seemed to jerk a little backwards and seemed to not want to move as easy as it was. Well stupid me I kept going and thought nothing of it...got to a stoplight and it accelerated and shifted normally, but when i tried downshifting to 4th down the road I could not get the car into ANY gears...long story short...it locked up in my driveway making the same noises. Turns out I had a hole in the transmission case that caused it to lose all of the oil, and my bearings fried because of it. The rollers from the bearings scattered everywhere and would bind into gears causing it to jerk and have a metal scraping sound.

Pull the trans fill plug and dip ## finger in there...see if the fluid is grey or has metal shavings or anything in it.