Date:         Fri, 13 Dec 1996 10:01:48 -0500
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Derek Drew <drew@interport.net>
Subject:      Re: Silicon oil in Syncros viscous coupling

Nobody has ever heard about anybody changing the oil, although somebody from
South Africa asked just this same question to us about 6 months ago nobody
knew the answer. It sounds like the answer is to find Visco Drive. I'll do a
search for them.

Alta Vista turns up somebody called Schumacher Visco Drive at
http://ally.ios.com/~millha19/schumacher/viscous.html but closer inspection
reveals this is viscous coupling for toy race cars (really!).

Euroseek turns up nothing for Visco Drive.

There is a Austrian white page telephone listing at www.atp.at/herold/ but
when I tried it the atp.at server was down so maybe somebody else can try it
or you will have more luck accessing from France.

There is also a German Yellow pages at www.gelbe-seiten.de/ but I couldn't
figure out how to search for "Visco Drive" because the site is all in
German, which I cannot read.

The rest of Europe appears to be at http://206.129.166.101/intl/int.html but
I think some body needs to submit "Visco Drive" who has broader language
skills than I have.

At 12:57 AM 12/13/96 -0600, you wrote:
>
>Hello Guys,
>
>As I wrote in my last mail, a lot of Syncroists in the Club are very
>interested in how to get theirs Syncros fixed because as they get olders
>(the vans, not the owners...), some of them have viscous coupling problems
>and, of course, turbo diesel engines. And as you surely know, the VW dealers
>prices for parts and repairs are fairly expensive in our country.
>
>So that's why we would be very interested in finding correspondants in
>Germany for all these kinds of problems.
>
>Maybe you'll be able to help me out about a question :
>
>Viscous coupling : They are built in a company called Visco Drive, but I'm
>not sure whether it's in Germany or Austria. The fact is, when they break,
>it's usually only a matter of silicon oil, they are OK mechanically, but the
>company doesn't want to tell which kind of oil it is. Just go to the VW
>dealer and get a new visco for about $3100 in France. Kind of expensive
>oil... Any idea about this? If we'd know about this oil, problems would be
>fixed. Only need to remove one screw, change the old oil and that's it! How
>do we found out about this? One of the Club's member got one from a wreck
>and put it on his Syncro. After that he opened the old one, everything,
>discs included was OK except the oil. It seemed that there was a kind of
>rusty greasy liquid instead of clean silicon. If someone knows exactly about
>this oil caracteristics, it'll be very helpful for all Syncro's addicts and
>save big bucks!! We're still working on it.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Philippe 
>'89 Syncro TD Oettinger
>French Syncro Club
>
>
>
___________________________________
Derek Drew                           New York, NY
drew@interport.net (main address for e-mail)
derekdrew@aol.com (alternate/backup, checked infrequently)