--snip--
I understand that the VB is the trickiest part on these and I think that is
where the skills are needed that exceed my (and average home mechanic)
capabilities.
--snip--

There's nothing particularly tricky about it* to my mind except: the
separation plate. There are several little balls in there that move back and
forth in their channels and seat in holes according to need. You can see
where they eventually start to wear the plate as they move back and forth
and they distort/oval out the holes in the direction of travel so that when
they do seat there's some blow-by.
There isn't much the average mechanic can do about that, but when I was on
the phone with Ken at German Transaxle he explained their process to me.
They have a way to replace that metal and re-drill the holes, and then they
test the VB on what he called a "dyno" (I of course had a mental image of
big rollers in the floor, but that obviously isn't it). If they can't
recondition your plate, they have others, or they can just take your whole
VB as a core and send you a reconditioned one. IIRC it was just under $200
shipped.
I should make it clear I haven't personally "done business" with them yet,
though I will have them do the VB on this next tranny I'm about to overhaul.
There are plenty of ppl on the list that have, so they can give their
reviews or you can look in the archives.

Ken did tell me that the cores (for the VBs and the trannies in general)
they're getting are getting more and more worn out. He said they've gone
from a few occasional failures to almost 20% there in the shop. He said they
generally catch them in testing, but they've still had to do warranty
service for some people because of problems after installation that didn't
show up in the tests (things happen in real life that don't happen on the
bench), and that after getting those back it's sometimes happened that there
was no apparent reason for the failure. He puts it down to something obscure
just being worn out of spec, and that they just try to take care of the
customer when that happens.

It seems to me that we are, for the most part, forced to use the trannies
that VW made for these vans (regardless of engine), so those of you that
have autos might want to scour the junkyards in your world and buy yourself
a spare.

If you find any for the Audi Turbo 5000, grab those up for sure. : )

Cya,
Robert

*The diagrams make it look a lot more daunting than it is; if you do it the
way I said in my previous email you should be fine.