Yesterday we were on our way back from Greenbrier State Park, winding our way back down a narrow mountain road.  To slow our decent, I had let the van simply coast in third gear.  A couple of minutes later, when passing through a small town, I tried to downshift from third to second.  Making the shift was difficult, though it took several tries and a bit of force to do so.

The rest of the ride was uneventful until we reached our neighborhood.  Suddenly, the van refused to go in first, second, or third and I had to yank on the gear shifter to get the van out of gear.  I was able to force it into fourth gear, but the clutch made a chirping sound when I did it.  I chugged in fourth back into our drive.  Once stopped, I could not get it in any gear with the clutch fully depressed, only grinding noises.  With the engine off, I could easily go into all the gears.

This morning, I crawled around to see if I could see any thing strange.  Nada.  I was able to measure about 20 mm of movement in the slave cylinder arm when the clutch pedal was pressed and released.

My trusty Bentley book is great if I plan on tearing down and rebuilding the tranny, but leaves me clueless if I am troubleshooting a clutch (?) problem.

Your thoughts are appreciated.

--
Brian
'85 Vanagon 7-passenger GL
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