Mark;

I wasted dozens of hours over several months messing with the same
problem on my two vanagons--simultanously. While Don is right on the
money with what he's saying, it didn't work out that I was satisfied
with the results of what I was doing. I always stick with it, though,
and finally see it through, but this time was an exception. I felt I
was endangering my gearboxes so I took them both in to a good, local VW
shop where they have lots of experience, tools, helpers, lifts and what
have you that I don't have at home.

It cost me about $55 per car, I think, as was some of the best money I
ever spent.

Bottom line, if you get to the point you just can't crawl under there
one more time for the same result, don't pull the transmission for a
rebuild until you've let an experienced shop have it for an hour.

Jim
On Oct 17, 2005, at 1:12 PM, Don Williams wrote:

> Hi Mark,
>
> My experience is that linkage is enormously important and that it is
> usually the linkage, and wrong adjustment makes you think it is the
> transmission.   At least you should work on that first since it only
> gets
> you dirty and angry and doesn't directly cost you money.   The guides
> to
> the gears are on the upper part of the box that is accessed under the
> spare
> tire.  You can adjust the shifter by a little allen screw on the shift
> so
> that the shifting mechanism in that box is pushed up to be influenced
> by
> those guides.  Then when you push down the shift to go into reverse,
> you
> are bypassing those guides.
> The next problem is often the rod  that goes back to the tranny, and
> the
> compression ring that allows the lateral movement of the shifter to
> displace the vertical movement on the rod that goes into the tranny.
> You
> just have to play around with it (it is frustrating).  Basically, a
> tiny
> adjustment on that ring influences whether or not a horizontal
> movement of
> the gear translate into engaging the gears properly.  For my problem,
> my 85
> Westy would not go into first gear, for love or money,  unless i pushed
> down the shifter and bypassed the guide in that box.  I thought my
> tranny
> was screwed up, but after dinking with it for several hours, I could
> see
> that if I rotated the shaft in the correct direction, I could get the
> beast
> in first without depressing the shift because I  had increased the
> distance
> that the shift rod tranveled without so that I did not need to depress
> the
> shifter to get enough distance to go into first gear.  Does that make
> any
> sense whatsoever??
> Call me if it still seems  weird.  (360-650-3641)
> Don
>
>
>
> From: Mark Brush <mbrush@GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Re: 1990 Westy - do 3 transmissions have same problem?
> I haven't dropped the shifter box yet. I've adjusted the shifter rod
> so tha=
> t
> the lower part of the stickshift is in the right place. It doesn't
> seem lik=
> e
> the stickshift hits anything in the box when in second gear.
> With the last transmission I had, I wanted to check to see whether it
> was
> the transmission, or the linkage. So I un-hooked the linkage, crawled
> under
> the bus, and manually shifted the transmission into second. I started
> her
> up, and let off on the clutch, and nothing happened - so I figured I
> had a
> bad transmission (all the other gears engaged). Is this the best way to
> check whether the problem is the trans or the linkage?
>