Your Westy was sitting for 5 years?

Have you checked the contacts in the shifter housing?  It could be a
simple case of them being so corroded that either no or occasional
contact is being made.  Will it start in both N and P?  Does the back
up light turn on in reverse?  The signal for the back up light comes
through the contacts in the shifter tower.

I got to the contacts by taking off the shifter handle via a set screw
and the housing by screws hidden under the carpet to either side of the
housing base.  My housing was full - a huge ball of mud courtesy of a
colony of mud daubers (wasp) - they were all dead. The electrical
contacts were very corroded...  Also check all the contacts at the
converter.  After 5 years they might be making intermittent contact -
or not at all.

As I remember it these Westy automatic transmissions are the same as
used in thousands of Audis and other European brands.  It should be no
problem getting a transmission shop to work on it.  Autozone carries
the transmission filter, etc.

Bill L

'89 Westy Automatic

-----Original Message-----From: Randy C. Nunes
<randycnunes@YAHOO.COM>To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COMSent: Sat, 30 Jun
2007 8:07 amSubject: 1984 Westfalia Automatic Transmission

________________________________________________________________________
AOL now offers free email to everyone.  Find out more about what's free
from AOL at AOL.com.