Where the seal set is located, there is no pressure on either side.
Somehow, gear oil does seem to make it into the ATF section. There is a
space between the seals and a drain hole to allow fluid that makes it
out of one section to drain out before going into the other section but
somehow the gear oil makes it past both seals. Many rebuilt
transmissions have the wrong seals, (no face spacers) installed with no
space between them so the drain does not work.

Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf
Of jbange
Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2005 3:02 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Automatic Transmission sometimes has to wake up...

At 10:01 AM 4/19/2005, you wrote:
>high ATF level and the symptoms you describe could mean the seal
between the
>differential and automatic part is failing, gear oil from the diff is
leaking
>into, and contaminating the Automatic trans part making the ATF level
go up,
>and look brownish red..    have you checked your diff fluid?  (17mm hex
nut)
>this happened on another vanagon i had.

Doesn't it usually happen the other way 'round? With the AT unit running
a
hydraulic pump and the final drive passively wallowing in a pool of gear
oil, doesn't the AT fluid usually blow into the final drive and make the
AT
fluid level go DOWN?  Though if it's a bad enough leak, I guess a final
drive pumped full of mixed ATF and gear oil would "leak back" after
sitting
a few hours...