Daniel Brideau <dan@HOBBYETC.COM> wrote:
"The only item I'm concerned with is the infamous 3-4th gear failure. My
Westfalia just flipped 140,000 miles - from what I read, this is the spot on
the odometer when the transmission is most likely to fail.
1) Should I get a new one now, or wait for this one to bust? I plan to keep
the van for few more years."

I might as well slide into 4th here: when I recently broke my tranny and
sent it to Daryl at AATransaxle for core, he said it all looked good inside,
except that the subject slider was cracked and likely would have failed
within????? It had about 110K mi. on it. I switched to synthetic at about
90K, Redline, then Amsoil. Noticeable change in smoothness and especially
cold weather conditions. I'd just suggest being careful to not "force" 3rd
to 4th shifts. My motto:
fast foot, slow hand ... but prompt. I move the shift lever out of the last
gear quickly, but don't force it into the next gear, it sort of shifts
itself that way, by my experience.

An additional thought: I've had "intuition" prior to trips that a particular
part was suspect, but the only one's that have are the one's that were
expressing symptoms. Alternators in particular. Noisy. Bearing noise after
replacing the belt and being tensioned too tight. The alternator failed on
that particular trip. The other "intuitions" have turned out to be my
paranoia and fear and have not materialized. No symptoms,  outside my head,
indicating a problem. :) VBG

Bob Stevens
'87 Westy Syncro
http://groups.msn.com/BobsPhotoShare
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