About the same thing happened to me Friday night. I was limited to 3rd
and 4th  gears though. Luckily I did not need to come to a complete
stop until back at my garage. Saturday I discovered the clamp
connecting the shift rods together had  come loose. I had replaced the
nylon bushings last summer, and thought I had tightened it enough, but
I guess not. It took several tries to get it adjusted right, but now my
'86 GL shifts smoother than ever. 34.8 in your Bentley covers the
procedure. Good luck, Neal Drive and enjoy your VW daily!
On Feb 27, 2006, at 8:19 PM, Automatic digest processor wrote:

> Date:    Mon, 27 Feb 2006 17:27:50 -0500
> From:    Wil Haslup <whaslup@GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: vanagon shifter bound???
>
> Recent discussions of shift issues must have infected me and my '80
> remotely...
>
> ; )
>
> I've had some slop in my shift for a short while but with no
> significant
> difficulty in finding gears.
>
> Today I backed out of my drive, shifted normally through three or four
> lights and a roundabout and had trouble down shifting into second after
> that...struggled to get down and then back into third...was able to
> keep
> it in third and not shift for several miles until I reached my
> destination.  On turning into my friends drive I couldn't get into
> first...managed to stall...put it into first while off and still,
> started and moved up their drive to park.  Sitting still then I had
> difficulty finding any gear.
>
>  From net research I'm thinking the nylon inerts of my shifter are
> trashed...
>
> My understanding and observation is I can probably get at the problem
> from the shifter by removing the bolts, or from underneath after
> dropping the spare...can remove the guts, rebuild and reinstall.  Is
> this right?
>
> Rebuild kits don't seem to be too available...Bus Depot shows one for a
> bit less than $100 but I'm uncertain if this is for the actual shifter
> or the linkage from there on.