Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 08:00:05 -0700
Reply-To: Karl Wolz <wolzphoto@WORLDNET.ATT.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Karl Wolz <wolzphoto@WORLDNET.ATT.NET>
Subject: Re: wearing down my Westy
In-Reply-To: <87f6d9b3ca6442fd8a6ea9a38c2d327b.phlogiston@ispwest.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Before condemning the tranny, I'd crawl under the van and lubricate all
of the shift linkage contact points, even if only with WD-40 (for a very
temporary fix). You may find that things free up nicely, in which case
you'll want to do a more permanent moly-grease lube job.
Sounds like a CV joint to me. Again, you may be able to get away with a
clean and lube of the joints on the offending side. If they haven't
been done in a while, it would be a good thing to do them all anyway.
Inspect the balls and lands while apart, looking for galling. Replace
joints as needed.
Karl Wolz
-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf
Of Bravo Sierra
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003 11:51 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: wearing down my westy
i just completed a 2 month, 15k mile tour of the country in my '86
westy. all in all my van was very mechinically fortuitus for the
duration of the trip, but she did develop two annoying issues during the
last 5k miles that i'd like to adress now that i'm home.
first, it has become very difficult to shift into first or second gear.
it often takes signifigant force and several attempts to get into gear.
there doesn't seem to be any temperature dependence (ambient or tranny)
in how much effort is required. i'm pretty confident that the clutch is
disengaging all the way, so it seems that the syncros are bad for those
gears, except that the tranny was supposedly rebuilt last year before i
bought the van. but i doubt the transmission fluid has been changed
since then... is it possilbe that a flush of the transmission fluid
could remedy this problem? what fluid to people reccomend? synthetic?
how hard is it to remove and rebuild the vanagon tranny? i have an
unemployed friend who used to work at some transmision shop; is it
likely we could do a decent job? or is this a quirky part requiring
lots of esoteric german tools to work on correctly?
second, the rear end has begun intermittently making some noise. the
sound is a metallic impact kind of noise that varies with road speed.
it seems though, like it is occuring at too low a frequency to be one
"clank" per wheel revoultion, ie only 2 or 3 per second at 20 m/h. it
*only* occurs under positive torque (ie acceleration, not braking or
engine braking) and gets louder the more torque is applied. it sounds
like the noise is coming from the left side, but it goes away if i turn
right while accelerating. does this sound like a bad cv joint? the
weird thing is that i first heard this sound at least 5k miles ago and
then it went away for 2 or 3 thousand and has been on and off since
then, more or less at random. i checked out the boots and they all look
intact. do you guys think these symptoms sound like a cv joint, or
something else? is it possible to take apart the half shafts apart and
put the middle piece back in backwards to get a few thousand more miles?
