Date: Thu, 22 Jun 1995 12:14:55 -0600 (MDT)
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: Jack Reed <jackr@fortnet.org>
Subject: Telluride tranny mystery solved!
My thanks to those who suggested tranny shops and the amount of time
needed to drop the engine and tranny for negotiating purposes with the
mechanic that has the van. After poring over the Bentley guide for
awhile I located what I thought was the culprit area, the gearshift
housing at the very end of the tranny. My thought was that, based on the
mech's description of a freely turning selector shaft, that the clip that
holds on the selector finger had come loose, allowing the finger to fall
off the selector shaft. This jibed with my wife's description of the
gearshift jamming and the mech's observation that it felt like something
came loose when he was wiggling things around.
The mechanic checked my theory by pulling the backup light switch and
looking at the end of the selector shaft. Sure enough, no selector
finger! He tried to reposition it on the end of the shaft but, due to
the limited room he had to work in, was unable to get it to seat.
My thinking is that I'll be able to support the tranny, pull the tranny
mount and have enough room to pull the gearshift housing off the end of
the tranny so that I can get things back in place. Then it's a simple
matter of bolting everything back together and off I go!!!
Compared to the mechanics idea of dropping everything to fix the tranny,
I like this solution just fine.
Anyone else have this happen to them? I've seen the clip that holds the
selector finger in place and it's pretty substantial. I may have had the
linkage misadjusted, causing the clip to slam into the end of the backup
light switch, ergo it's early demise.
Wish me luck, I'll be making the four hour drive to test my theory on
Saturday and will let the list know what happened when I get back.
BTW, Jerry Long of Salida, CO (719)535-7175 is as honest and helpful a
mechanic as I've run into in a long time. He's about the only VW guy in
that area so if you're cruising through SW Colorado keep him in mind.
Jack