Corrosion on trannys where salt/anti icing stuff is used is all too common.
There are many core tranny's I get that have totally unusable cases due to
that problem and there is nothing other than painting when thay are still ok
that will stop it.
Once the alloy is starting to go, there is nothing permanent that will help
that I know of. JB weld will temporarily do the job, but wont stay put for
long. Some guys have added steel pieces onto where the shifter mounting tab
goes to jury rig it, but you have to have enough material there to hook the
plate to....no easy answer..
Daryl of AA Transaxle
Duvall, WA. (Seattle area)
1-877-377-0773 toll free
425-788-4070
aatransaxle.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Herr Wibo Fichten" <wibo.fichten@ROGERS.COM>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 7:54 PM
Subject: Transmission housing corrosion and (separate question) asbestos ;~(

> Busbrats, Vanagonites, Syncronauts, lend me your ears...
>
> I have a project 1988 Syncro and have discovered to my dismay rather
severe
> corrosion of certain areas of the transaxle housing.  There are no rotted
> through holes, but the shift link attachment point (a sort of tab thingy)
> fell off. The place where the diff locker switch enters the housing is
quite
> corroded.
>
> This is a canadian vehicle that was winter driven, but my 1984 2wd, which
> was also winter driven (but not every winter), has it's housing quite
> intact.
>
> The affected parts seem to crumble to a dark grey dust.
>
> Any suggestions as to what may have caused this?  Sure there is road salt,
> but I was under the impression that aluminium was much better at resisting
> corrosion, as opposed to steel?  Aluminium road signs exposed to salt
spray
> seem to last forever. The head corrosion problems were attributed to
> phosphates, not road salt.
>
> Anybody know if you can weld aluminium (to add some metal, essentialy,
> rather than to join two parts).  Would this be at the risk of warping the
> housing?  How about the other handyman's duct tape, epoxy of the JB Weld
> variety (for an outside application, as opposed to the head repair
> proceedures discussed in the archives)?
>
> How can I stop or slow the dammage? Just a bit of rust proof oiling, I
> suppose?
>