Daniel Brideau <dan@HOBBYETC.COM> wrote: "The only item I'm concerned with is the infamous 3-4th gear failure. My Westfalia just flipped 140,000 miles - from what I read, this is the spot on the odometer when the transmission is most likely to fail. 1) Should I get a new one now, or wait for this one to bust? I plan to keep the van for few more years." I might as well slide into 4th here: when I recently broke my tranny and sent it to Daryl at AATransaxle for core, he said it all looked good inside, except that the subject slider was cracked and likely would have failed within????? It had about 110K mi. on it. I switched to synthetic at about 90K, Redline, then Amsoil. Noticeable change in smoothness and especially cold weather conditions. I'd just suggest being careful to not "force" 3rd to 4th shifts. My motto: fast foot, slow hand ... but prompt. I move the shift lever out of the last gear quickly, but don't force it into the next gear, it sort of shifts itself that way, by my experience. An additional thought: I've had "intuition" prior to trips that a particular part was suspect, but the only one's that have are the one's that were expressing symptoms. Alternators in particular. Noisy. Bearing noise after replacing the belt and being tensioned too tight. The alternator failed on that particular trip. The other "intuitions" have turned out to be my paranoia and fear and have not materialized. No symptoms, outside my head, indicating a problem. :) VBG Bob Stevens '87 Westy Syncro http://groups.msn.com/BobsPhotoShare http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tiico |
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