My experience with our '88 is that alot of shifting woes can be eliminated
by cleaning and lubricating the linkage from front to rear.  Seems alot of
shifting effort can be lost in just moving a stiff linkage; to the point of
feeling like a completed shift that's not.    The biggest difference for us
came with cleaning and lubing the "cup and ball" on the side of the
transmission.  This made such a difference that I do it twice a year now.
Recently I even put a little redline synthetic tranny lube in the cup to
keep the grease nice and loose in the cold weather.  It's not hard to clean
up the linkage. Try it.

Gary
----- Original Message -----
From: Little Bear <naiu@MEDIAONE.NET>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2000 4:59 PM
Subject: shifting problem

> Yet another one,
>
> I have been following this thread for a little bit as I too have a problem
> with shifting into first gear. Yet, it would seem as if my problem is
> different form the others that have been mentioned.
>
> Here is the problem :
>
> Van has trouble shifting into first gear even when the van is not running.
> (someone commented when the van was inspected that it could be the
Universal
> Joint sticking?)
>
> I believe that this problem is directly related to have a problem making
> sure that it is all the way in 4th gear
> (this would lead me to believe that either the gear is bad but since it
does
> shift there time to time I am more leaned as to either the Universal Joint
> or an adjustment to the shifter mechanism.)
>
> So here is my question..
>
>
> How do I troubleshoot this? and in doing so what are the fixes for the
> various problems that could cause this.
>