Damon,
It sounds like your shifter may not be centered fore-aft in the shift
gate?  Would be a matter of loosening the band clamp in the center of the
shift rod and pulling the two sections of the rod apart by a
bit.  Left-right problems are adjusted by rotating the two shift rod
sections against each other just a hair and then retightening the same
clamp.  When you crawl under there and stare at the linkage you'll see how
it all works.  Getting it adjusted is such a trial-and-error thing it
seems...  helps to have a beer handy and be in a very patient state of mind
best,
Robert H
Ithaca, NY
84 Westy
<www.people.cornell.edu/pages/rdh24/vw/index_vw.html>

At 06:10 PM 5/31/2005 -0700, you wrote:
>When my tranny went out about 20k miles ago in the
>middle of Yukon, Canada, i didn't know about the 3-4
>slider hub breakage thing and tried to mess with the
>linkage to "fix" things.  Obviously, this was a
>mistake.  The shop who ended up replacing the
>transmission could never get it to shift into first
>gear correctly.  There are a couple shifting problems:
>
>#1) I have to push the lever over to the left as far
>as possible for it to kind of go in to 1st gear.  It
>isn't horrible, but it is reluctant at times.  What is
>the fix for this?
>#2) Additionally, the gates between gears 2 and 4
>don't really prevent the shifter from moving side to
>side unless i pull the shifter all the way back (and
>correspondingly, 1 and 3 separate very readily).  What
>is the fix for this?
>
>I have already tried adjusting the shift lever mount
>plate up front, but it is maxed out in the direction
>it wants to go.
>
>Thanks for any input on this :-)
>
>-Damon
>
>'84 Westy "The Van" w/2.3L WBX
>Vancouver, BC
>
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