In a message dated 5/1/01 5:28:41 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
emaglott@buncombe.main.nc.us writes:

> Looking for mid 80's vans, and finding some with automatic transmissions.
> What is the lifespan of these things?  I was looking at a van with 175k
> miles, with an automatic.  Is the trans likely to be a problem in the near
> future?  Can a run of the mill tranny shop work on them?  I generally don't
> like automatics.  Will I be more or less annoyed by the vanagon with
> automatic than the average car with automatic?  Does the gas mileage suffer
> much with the automatic?
>
>

man, there must be alot of newbies joining the list!!!  :<)

the vanagon automatic transmissions are FAR more reliable than the 4spd
manual transmissions.  the 4spd manual transmissions ALL suffer what is known
as the 3/4 gear slider hub crack syndrome, sooner or later.  when that
happens, you get grinding between 3 and 4th, and sometimes tranny will hang
up in 3rd gear.   it's a known design flaw in all waterboxer Manual
transmissions.  the only fix is to rebuild or replace the whole
tran$mission.. if you want reliability, get an automatic.  the top end
performance of a automatic vanagon is the SAME as the 4spd vanagon.  even low
end performance is not much different either.  if you want a Porsche, dont
buy a Vanagon.
i've owned about 4 automatic transmission vanagons.  never had a problem with
any of them tranny wise.  i've owned about 7 or so manual transmission
vanagons, and 3 of them had the 3/4 gear slider hub problem, one grinded
between 3rd and 4th, and one actually had the tranny always lock up if you
forgot to take it out of 3rd gear berfore you rolled to a stop. You dont know
how much of a pain in the butt it was to get it unstuck either..    anyway..
go with the auto, you'll be glad you did.

chris

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