Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 11:23:04 -0800
Reply-To:     David Bayer <bayer@SYBASE.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon mailing list <Vanagon@Gerry.SDSC.EDU>
From:         David Bayer <bayer@SYBASE.COM>
Subject:      lost into the tranny...

Hello-
        While replacing the gear oil in my syncro's tranny, the plastic end
of one of those cheap funnel-tube-plastic tip decided to come off while I was
putting oil into the tranny. It fell inside when it did so. After staring
at the end of the tube for some 10 minutes where the 3 inch long by 1/2
diameter tip used to be, a friend crawled under the van fiddled with the
filler hole and said he could feel the tip resting on the bottom of the gear
case. Looking through the Bentley showed that the gear case is separated
from the rest of the tranny so I cannot fish the stupid thing out the drain
hole... Filler it out of the filler hole with a piece of brazing wire proved
futile....

        I am looking for one of brake bleeder things that has a venturi
thingy in it (takes compressed air and produces vaccuum) in hopes of threading
a smal diameter piece of vinyl tubing into the filler hole and dragging the
tip to the hole so it can be extracted with the help of a piece of wire...

        I am looking for other alternatives besides pulling the tranny as I
don't have a transmission adapter and don't know anything about mating the
transaxle and engine once I have them apart (though it would be real easy to
get the tip out if I could flip the transaxle on its side so the filler hole
was now on the bottom surface - anyone have a portable van rotator?).

dave