The bellhousing will unbolt after you remove some bolts inside the bell
area and 4 down low outside. Then the input shaft is held on with a
circlip, an inner splined sleeve, and a threaded stud. This is often a
struggle to remove and reinstall as the "stars" must be aligned properly
first. I have done it about 20 times so it can't be too bad.

It is virtually impossible to bend the input shaft so I would not worry
about that.

Mark

Tobin Copley wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I have *finally* found time to pull the transmission out of my diesel
> westy in preparation of replacing it with a different (but still
> diesel) transmission.  The one going in has an aircooled bellhousing
> and input shaft on it, so I'll need to:
>
> 1) remove the diesel bellhousing and diesel input shaft off my old
> diesel tranny,
> 2) remove the aircooled bellhousing and aircooled input shaft off the
> "new" diesel tranny, then
> 3) put my old diesel bellhousing and diesel input shaft on to my "new"
> diesel tranny.
>
> Make sense?
>
> This procedure does not seem to be covered in my Bentley.  Will it be
> obvious how to proceed?  There are smoke bolts I can see inside the
> bellhousing that seem like the ones I should remove to pull the
> bellhousing.  Once I get that off, will there be an equally obvious set
> of bolts to remove to take the input shaft off?  If not, can someone
> show me the way?
>
> When I put it back together, how much do I torque the bolts?
>
> Finally, when removing the transmission (by myself--a bit tricky) I was
> unable to keep the input shaft perfectly straight with respect to the
> engine at all times, and put a little up/down or sideways force on it
> as I separated the transmission from the engine.  I'd been warned to
> "take care not to bend the input shaft" so I gotta ask, just how
> delicate is that thing and how much force are we talking about to
> possibly bend it?  It looks pretty substantial to me.  Is there a way
> to test to see if anything got bent?
>
> Thanks!
>
> T.
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Tobin Copley        Vancouver, BC, Canada      49deg 23'N-123deg 19'W
>
> '82 Westfalia 1.6L NA diesel ("Stinky")
> '97 son Russell                               =============
> '99 daughter Margaret                        /_| |_L| |__|:| clatter
>                           SPEED KILLS!       [.      =     .| clatter!
>                      Drive a Vanagon diesel   ~-()-==----()-~ ~  ~