Date:         Tue, 18 Jun 2002 09:57:27 -0500
Reply-To:     wilden1@JUNO.COM
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Stan Wilder <wilden1@JUNO.COM>
Subject:      General Warning for Newbies
Comments: cc: wetwesties@yahoogroups.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

When I bought my 83 Westy in 1995 the first thing I did was change the
oil and filter also had the grease in the manual transmission grease
changed.
Turns out that the oil installed was 10/30 wt and when they changed the
transmission grease I let them purge or clean the transmission with
solvent.
The important fact in this statement is that they never removed the drain
plug from the pinion end of the transmission. So in effect I was running
some mix of Transmission Grease and solvent until the 3/4 synchronizer
failed within 30 days. It failed in less than 1000 miles.
Strange how we discover things as years go by but I opened this tranny up
(today) to investigate with the intent of replacing the 3/4 slider and
synchronizers. There was apparently no other damage to the transmission
so I proceeding to install a rebuild kit I got from Long Engineering.
This is just a word of caution from a Westy driver with a parked Westy
waiting 45 days for a decent used tranny.
If you're going to have somebody else change your transmission grease and
you can't get under the vehicle to check what comes out of the tranny
............. ask them to see the drain plug. It wouldn't be a bad idea
to ask them to see both the fill and drain plugs.
Don't be surprised if it has a little fuzz on the magnet, this is common
on well used transmissions.

Stan Wilder
83 Air Cooled Westfalia

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