Paul..Its a tricky wiggling tapping turning that get all the splines in the
various shafts to line up...Turn the final drive flanges while turning the
shaft during install and never tighten the 4 bolts all the way till
everything is lined up..There are little what look like piston rings on the
shaft and one of them may have gotten tweaked...Thats the only thing I can
think of that would keep them from separating...Been a while since I have
been into an auto though, so brain is fuzzy..
Daryl of AA Transaxle
(425) 788-4070
aatransaxle.com
86 Syncro Westy
Zetec in the trunk
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Guzyk" <paullist08@GUZYK.COM>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Thursday, July 09, 2009 7:09 AM
Subject: Problem removing / installing automatic from final drive

>I have a bad 85 Automatic Transmission Vanagon (slips in all forward gears)
>so I pulled the entire transaxle.   I then removed the AT unit by undoing
>the four 13mm nuts and separating from the final drive.  Came apart
>relatively easily with a little persuasion.
>
> I took another Vanagon AT unit that I had "lying around", new paper
> gasket, new big O-ring and tried to mate them up....it seemed to go on,
> but was rather tight.   Took a few tries of tightening nuts evenly to
> squeeze the two units together.   I did this on another Vanagon a few
> years ago and don't remember it being this tight.
>
> I then realized the Turbine shaft was not seated all the way into the AT
> (see Bentley 38.3).
>
> My transaxle DID NOT look this:
> http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/jj285/baboonia/vanagon/02.jpg
> (thanks http://www.weidefamily.net/vanagon/ for the photo)
>
> My turbine shaft was sticking out of the bell housing about 1.5 inches
> past the center input shroud and could not be seated flush with the shroud
> no matter how I tried.
>
> So I decided to remove the 4 nuts again and separate the AT from the final
> drive to see what is going on....well, I can separate them about 3/16 inch
> (Just seeing the o-ring) but the two will not come apart now....I've tried
> banging, prying something is preventing them from separating.
>
> Any tips or advice from people who have seen this before?   What could be
> prevent them from coming apart easily?
>
> Also, I assume next time I should line up/insert the Turbine Shaft into
> the AT all the way before mating it to the final drive?