Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 14:18:15 -0700
Reply-To: David Raistrick <keen@LENTI.TYPE2.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: David Raistrick <keen@LENTI.TYPE2.COM>
Subject: So what went wrong with Sharkey's "Todd Hill" tranny? (fwd)
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Just more FYI re: good ol' Todd.
--
David Raistrick '66 SO-44 Westy keen@type2.com
in Guyton Ga
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 13:37:50 -0700
From: James W. Lindsay <jlindsay@home.com>
Reply-To: VintagVW@listproc.sjsu.edu
To: VintagVW@listproc.sjsu.edu, hooligan_racing@onelist.com,
Cindy Lindsay <cindyl@infohwy.com>, Courtney Hook <chook@nisa.net>,
Don Boneau <obonahan@home.com>, Electrified! <overkill@crimson-dragon.com>,
Erin Lassley <silent@beatricene.com>,
Gilbert Sy Chan <karmann@skyinet.net>, Jeff Martin <jmartin@sd68.bc.ca>,
Mike Adams <glenburn@nisa.net>,
Paul Ledbetter <Perpendicular@austintx.net>,
Rachel Hollis <RHollis@nps.navy.mil>,
Ric C. Campbell <RicCampbell@tx.slr.com>,
Robert K. Kuhn <kealoha@hooligan.cc>,
Ronnie DeVries <rdevries@pointecom.net>
Cc: kn6f@dolphinsci.com, sciroccopilot@ldd.net, pearson.d@worldnet.att.net,
nurofiz@aol.com, iml-vintagvw@i405.com
Subject: So what went wrong with Sharkey's "Todd Hill" tranny?
To those of you I have cc'd into this post, I apologize if this brings up
bad memories. Unfortunately, I installed my tranny before some of you back
in October 1998, but was unable to find out about Todd's craftsmanship
until just recently. You can rest assured, however, that you are not the
only ones he has screwed.
Erin, could you please post this to the various Bus lists? Gilbert, could
you do the same to the KG lists? Someone can let the guys on the ACVW list
know too.
========
This post has been a long time coming. It wasn't until last month that I
managed to bother getting my tranny rebuilt by a local guru, and it wasn't
until then that I found out the *real* reason why my tranny packed it in
after less than 1,000 miles of non-abusive driving:
It was built by an incompetent boob named Todd Hill.
Normally boobs are pretty neat-o. I'd say that they are up there on my top
ten list of favourite things. Not this boob. At first my dealings with
Todd were great. He was wise, knowledgable, and willing to spend the time
to explain things I haven't had the opportunity to experience with regards
to transaxle rebuilding. We corresponded via email, ICQ, and telephone for
months picking options and alternatives to my needs.
I live in Vancouver, BC, while Todd lived in Olympia, WA. Todd was willing
to deliver the tranny to me in Vancouver as part of a 400 mile round trip
(saving me probably $100+ Cdn in shipping charges) and "smuggled" the
tranny through customs so that I wouldn't have to pay duty, import taxes,
etc. He also acted as a mail box for me, allowing me to order things and
have them delivered to him in Olympia (like SAW axles, many Berg parts,
etc.) so that he could bring them up with him when he brought up the
tranny. At first he didn't even ask for a deposit, until the total owed
exceeded $1,000 US (that includes the axles, Berg parts, etc.). Did I
mention that *he* ordered the axles and Berg parts for me and simply added
their cost to my final bill?
I thought I was dealing with a really nice guy, and I might have been at
the time. My first concern, however, was when he arrived with the tranny
that first evening in late September, 1998. He made the comment that "the
tranny was stiff, but that it would break in over time". He wasn't kidding
about the tranny being stiff... I could barely turn the tranny over while
using a clutch disc on the input shaft for leverage!
My next concern happened after I installed the tranny. I bolted it in and
began reconnecting all the rear suspension components. I then went inside
the car and "tapped" the shift coupler on to the tranny's "hockey stick".
It wouldn't shift. The tranny seemed to be stuck in gear somehow. I tried
everything, but was eventually forced to pull the tranny again. Luckily I
didn't have the engine installed yet (that didn't happen until the spring
of '99).
I took the nose cone off of the tranny and discovered that all three shift
rails were indeed in the neutral position, just as they should be. What
apparently happened, however, was that one of the shift fork set screws
either came loose or was tightened down when the rail was not lined up
properly. While the three shift rails indicated that the tranny was in
neutral, one of the shift forks had shifted and wouldn't disengage from one
of the gears. The tranny had to come completely apart. Argh...
I contacted Todd and he offered to drive all the way back up to Vancouver
in order to pick up the tranny and return it to his "shop". I felt that
this was w-a-y too generous and offered to drive the tranny back down to
him, with the agreement that he would bring it back up. I wasn't 100%
positive that the shifting problem wasn't something I had caused when I
installed the tranny so I didn't want him wasting *his* time if it was
indeed my fault.
Todd never did point any fingers with regards to what had caused the shift
fork to slip on the rail. He tore it apart, fixed it, and brought it back
up. The tranny was still "stiff", however. It still wouldn't turn over
without using the clutch disc for leverage.
He drove off and I immediately proceeded to begin installing it. For
reasons I can't remember, I decided to remove the nosecone again. Voila!
The tranny was no longer stiff. When I reinstalled the nosecone, the
tranny tightened up again. WTF? How come a veteran ACVW transaxle builder
couldn't figure this one out, yet it took me only about ten minutes to
stumble upon it?
If you got your Haynes, Muir, or Bentley available, you will notice that
there are two large bearings in the front of the gear carrier. One of
these-- the large one with the flange-- was protruding ever so slightly
from the carrier housing that when I bolted the nosecone on, it would apply
force to the outer bearing race (thereby increasing friction and causing
the tranny to feel "tight").
I hopped in the car and chased after him (he was dropping another tranny
off a few miles away) and managed to catch him going the other direction
onto the main bridge leading out of Vancouver. I frantically turned the
car around and chased after him but I never did catch up to him. I wasn't
about to chase him all the way into the USA...
Anyway, I called him up that night and we discussed a possible solution:
get some gasket paper (1/32") and make another nosecone-to-gear carrier
gasket to create the necessary "clearance" to prevent the nosecone from
pressing on the large flanged bearing. It worked, or at least I thought it
did.
I installed the tranny, but by this time it was October (of '98) and I
still hadn't finished building my motor yet. The car sat for eight months
before the engine went in and I was able to drive the car.
Immediately, I noticed a slight gear whine in third gear and a slightly
louder one in 4th. After all the trouble I've had in the last eight
months, coupled with the fact that I had *finally* been able to drive my
car after five long years of construction, I decided that it wasn't worth
tearing everything apart to solve what I thought was simply a noisy bearing
in the tranny. I wanted to drive my car...
The car drove fine after that, up until January of this year. Then that
whine I mentioned grew into a very quiet ticking sound. Ticking led to
clicking, which led to clacking. Clacking eventually let way to clanking,
with the occasional clunking sound. This all occurred over a period of
less than 30 miles of actual driving. Then it started experiencing severe
shifting problems.
I took the car to work and raised it up to drain the tranny. I still have
a small Ziploc bag containing more than (I kid you not) 1 cubic centimetre
of ring gear fragments-- and this doesn't count the particles I was unable
to catch when I first removed the tranny drain plug. The ring & pinion had
totally gone, with every tooth of the ring gear showing signs of damage (as
viewed through the fluid drain hole). I sighed, filled it back up with
fluid, and drove the car home to park it until the weather turned better to
work on it. During that final drive home it sounded like I was grinding
gravel inside my tranny. It would even stall out sometimes while waiting
at traffic lights and it would crank over very slowly. Yikes!
Bad weather, laziness, and a lack of funds ended up causing a four month
hiatus. The tranny finally came out about six weeks ago, but a good used
3.88:1 ring & pinion was three weeks away via UPS. The builder had the
tranny for two weeks and I just installed it last weekend. He discovered a
whole bunch of problems with my tranny that could only be blamed on the
incompetence of Todd Hill.
Although this is a swing axle, it was assembled inside a 1970 IRS case for
reasons I can no longer remember. The late cases use a large castellated
nut to secure the large pinion bearing to the inside of the case instead of
the four bolt flange found on earlier cases. The four bolt flange design
uses metal tabs that bend up to prevent the four bolts from coming loose,
while the later design relies on generous torquing and a sufficient amount
of Loctite. My castellated nut was *NOT* Loctited in place and eventually
worked its way loose. This allowed the pinion to shift forward & back
inside the case, at times contacting the teeth on the ring gear by just the
tips. Application of any horsepower under these conditions will cause the
ring & pinion to work away from each other, skipping over the teeth and
eventually chipping them enough that they break off. Not *one* of my ring
gear teeth was intact.
Approximately ten steel synchro teeth were missing from each of the four
gear hubs. According to my current builder, this is sometimes done to
improve shifting into third and fourth. He can't for the life of him
figure out why a tranny builder would bust them off of first and second,
and they didn't break off inside the tranny during use as there was no sign
of them (the gear half and diff half of an ACVW tranny are separated
internally and share the tranny fluid through a tiny interconnecting hole--
a hole that would most likely not allow metal particles to travel from one
side to the other). At least I couldn't find any of these steel synchro
teeth in my little Ziploc bag.
One of my brass synchros was bent. The gear stacks are assembled using a
hydraulic press at one point and if everything is lined up properly, there
usually isn't a problem. Todd did not line up the "dogs" of the synchro
hub with the notches in at least two synchros, causing them to deform when
he squeezed everything together using the press. Since it is impossible to
assemble the gear stack in this way (the gear stacks would end up longer
and the big bearing nut on the end wouldn't screw on all the way), he
*must* have realized his mistake and reoriented the synchros so that
everything lined up properly. He couldn't have got it into the case
otherwise.
The gear stack assembled on to the pinion shaft was set with too tight a
preload, which evidently caused that bearing noise I heard in third and
fourth. This was also the cause behind the large flanged bearing on the
front of the gear carrier protruding out of the housing to the point that
an additional custom gasket was needed. My current builder told me that no
qualified ACVW transaxle rebuilder would have let this one slip by and use
the excuse "the tranny was stiff, but that it would break in over time".
Furthermore, no qualified ACVW transaxle rebuilder would suggest making up
a thicker gasket to compensate for the protruding flanged bearing. At
least no honest one would.
There were other concerns too. Originally I had asked Todd to take a few
pictures during the assembly of my tranny so that I could include them in
my photo diary. I wasn't questioning his work. I reminded him no less
than a half dozen times while he was actually building it. When he
delivered the tranny, he confessed that the pictures that he had taken with
his digital camera were stored on a ZIP disk and that his wife had taken
their ZIP drive with her on a business trip. He told me that he would
upload them to me as soon as she returned with the drive. He never did.
What he did end up sending me, though, were pictures taken of loose gears
*similar* to mine that he was apparently installing in someone else's
tranny. Whatever.
This tranny has also leaked since day-one. Most of that time the car has
been stationary, which is extremely odd for a newly rebuilt tranny. I was
forced to take extra precautions this time. I'll know more in the coming
months. It's been three days and there isn't a drop visible anywhere so
far.
I corresponded with Todd once or twice between the moment I installed the
tranny back in October '98 and June of '99. Shortly after that, however,
he told me he was moving back east to Cincinnati, Ohio to be closer to his
father in-law. He mentioned this to me when he *first* brought the tranny
up, and again last year. I'm not sure when he actually did move, or if he
ever did, but his AOL account was active right up until early this year.
He was receiving my emails as up to and including February 1, although I
cannot verify if he was actually reading them or not. When I presented him
with my final ultimatum on May 9 regarding what I believe he owes me for
crappy workmanship, I *finally* got a bounce back from his email account.
Sometime between Feb 1 and May 9 his AOL account was closed.
So that's it. Todd Hill owes me $225 Cdn (plus taxes) for a "good used"
replacement ring & pinion gear set. He also owes me $200 Cdn for labour to
rebuilt my tranny, and $50 Cdn in miscellaneous parts (like new 1st and 2nd
gear hubs, synchros, and a few bearings). My current builder was quite
generous knowing my plight, and didn't charge me an arm or a leg. If
someone had told me about this guy two years ago, *he* would have got my
business instead of Todd HIll. Did I mention that my new builder has been
drag racing Beetles for the last 15+ years?
========
That's the story. Not much to update on my website because of this
setback. The moral? DON'T BUY ANY TRANSAXLE FROM TODD HILL.
On a lighter note, I have pretty much finalized my decision as to which
aftermarket computer I will be using to replace my POS CB Performance EFI
computer. More on that in the coming weeks.
----------------------------------------------------------------
James W. Lindsay Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Website: http://members.home.net/jlindsay ICQ: #7521644
----------------------------------------------------------------
Fish and visitors stink in three days.
----------------------------------------------------------------
